flip 


ij  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

WINCHESTER 


GIFT  OF 
Brofessor  John  S.iatlock 


A  GROUP  OF  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 


THE  M  ACM  ILL  AN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA  •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

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THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


A   GROUP   OF 
ENGLISH    ESSAYISTS 

OF   THE 

EARLY  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

BY 
C.   T.   WINCHESTER 

PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 
IN   WESLEYAN   UNIVERSITY 


gorfe 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1910 

All  rights  reserved 


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COPYRIGHT,  1910, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  January,  igio. 


J.  8.  Cushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Co 

MY    FRIEND    AND    COLLEAGUE 

OSCAR    KUHNS 


M205174 


THE  following  papers  pretend  to  no  discovery  of 
new  biographical  fact,  nor  to  any  reversals  of  estab- 
lished critical  verdict.  They  are,  for  the  most  part, 
the  result  of  many  pleasant  hours  in  a  college  semi- 
nary room;  and  their  interest,  if  any  interest  they 
have,  is  that  attending  the  informal  discussion  of  a 
group  of  familiar  and  delightful  English  prose-writers. 

If  a  disproportionate  attention  seems  given  in  these 
pages  to  biography  rather  than  to  criticism,  it  should 
be  remembered  that  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  De  Quincey, 
Wilson,  and  Hunt  all  found  their  themes  within  their 
own  personal  experience.  Perhaps  no  other  body 
of  English  prose,  equally  large  and  important,  is 
so  exclusively  autobiographical.  The  biographical 
method  of  approach,  always  useful,  is  here  the  only 
one  open  to  the  critic.  He  must  first  know  the  man 
before  he  can  estimate  the  book. 


vii 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


THE  NEW  ESSAY  —  JEFFREY  AS  CRITIC  i 

WILLIAM  HAZLITT 26 

CHARLES  LAMB 76 

THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY 118 

JOHN  WILSON 166 

LEIGH  HUNT 204 


A    GROUP    OF    ENGLISH 
ESSAYISTS 

THE   NEW   ESSAY  — JEFFREY  AS    CRITIC 

I 

VERY  different  literary  forms  have  been  designated 
by  the  common  name  Essay.  In  strictness,  it  is 
to  Montaigne  that  we  owe  the  name  and  the  thing. 
His  Essais,  excellently  translated  by  John  Florio  in 
1583,  were  at  once  popular  in  England,  and  Bacon, 
fourteen  years  later,  borrowed  their  title  for  his 
famous  little  bundles  of  apothegm.  The  influence 
of  the  Essais,  continuing  into  the  next  century,  in- 
creased with  the  liking  for  all  things  French  after 
the  Restoration,  and  is  attested  by  Cotton's  new 
translation  in  1680.  They  evidently  furnished  the 
model  for  those  charming  discursive  papers  by 
Cowley,  Halifax,  and  Temple,  which  closely  resemble 
some  of  the  best  work  of  Hazlitt  or  Lamb. 

But  the  sudden  and  immense  popularity  of  the 
Taller  and  Spectator  in  the  Queen  Anne  time  brought 
into  prominence  another  type  of  the  essay.  It  is 
the  peculiar  praise  of  Addison  that  he  knew  how 


A   GROUP  OF   ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

to  give  permanent  charm  to  the  familiar,  even  to  the 
trivial,  by  nicety  of  literary  skill.  His  manner  is 
simple,  yet  always  easy  and  urbane.  He  had  noth- 
ing of  importance  to  say ;  but  he  could  say  it  with  a 
suavity,  humor,  and  grace  that  make  the  veriest 
nothings  admirable.  He  was  no  philosopher,  no 
statesman,  and  a  very  mediocre  critic,  but  his  little 
papers  on  a  fan  or  a  petticoat,  on  the  foibles  of  Sir 
Roger  or  the  vanity  of  Ned  Softly,  may  last  as  long 
as  the  Paradise  Lost,  and  very  probably  find  more 
readers. 

For  more  than  half  a  century,  the  acknowledged 
mastery  of  Addison  tended  to  popularize  this  lit- 
erary form  in  which  he  had  won  such  success. 
Before  the  close  of  the  century  there  had  appeared 
more  than  a  hundred  periodicals,  —  most  of  them 
as  short-lived  as  the  flies  of  a  summer,  —  which  at- 
tempted to  do  what  had  been  done  so  brilliantly 
in  the  Taller  and  the  Spectator.  But  they  all  failed. 
The  essay  of  the  Addisonian  type  demands  the  skill 
of  an  Addison.  It  lost  its  distinctive  charm  even  in 
the  treatment  of  Goldsmith ;  and  it  becomes  a  solid, 
clumsy  thing  under  the  ponderous  handling  of  John- 
son in  the  Rambler  and  Idler.  Before  the  close  of 
the  century  its  form  was  outgrown;  the  modern 
essay  has  a  quite  different  origin. 

For  two  hundred  years,  indeed,  many  excellent 
prose  papers  of  moderate  length,  written  upon 


THE  NEW  ESSAY 

weighty  themes,  political,  philosophical,  and  crit- 
ical, had  appeared  as  prefaces,  letters,  pamphlets, 
and  short  treatises;  but  it  was  the  new  Reviews  and 
Magazines,  founded  at  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  that  produced  the  modern  essay. 
Now,  for  the  first  time,  we  have  that  extended  dis- 
cussion of  some  one  theme,  popular  in  manner  yet 
accurate  in  statement,  and  admitting  high  literary 
finish  to  which  we  now  confine  the  name  of  essay. 
The  founding  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  in  1802,  not 
only  introduced  to  the  public  a  new  group  of  young 
liberal  writers,  it  introduced  a  new  type  of  writing, 
a  type  adapted  to  a  wide  range  of  subjects,  giving 
expression  to  the  author's  personality,  and  affording 
scope  for  almost  any  kind  of  rhetorical  excellence. 

The  Edinburgh  had,  indeed,  been  preceded  by  a 
number  of  so-called  Reviews; 1  of  which  all  but  two 
were  short-lived  and  of  no  influence.  These  two, 
however,  the  Monthly  Review,  founded  in  1749, 
and  the  Critical  Review,  in  1756,  were  already  of 
quite  venerable  age.  Though  they  contained  little 
but  book-notices,  for  half  a  century  they  had  been 
rival  pretenders  to  the  realm  of  English  criticism. 
By  looking  over  the  correspondence  of  Fanny  Burney 

1  The  London  Review,  1775-1780;  A  New  Review,  1782-1786; 
the  English  Review,  1783-1796;  the  Analytical  Review,  1788- 
1799. 

3 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

or  of  Cowper,  one  may  see  how  their  verdicts  were 
dreaded  by  young  or  timorous  authors.  The 
Monthly  Review  was  conducted  by  that  redoubtable 
Philistine,  Ralph  Griffiths,  who  starved  and  bullied 
Goldsmith,  and  furnished  security  for  the  poet's 
gay  clothing  at  the  price  of  four  articles  for  the 
Review.  Most  of  Griffiths'  criticism,  however,  was 
written  by  feebler  men,  poor-devil  authors  whose 
opinions  were  always  at  his  dictation.  He  paid  them 
at  the  rate  of  two  guineas  a  sheet  of  sixteen  pages, 
and  as  their  idea  of  a  review  was  eight  pages  of  quo- 
tation to  one  of  criticism,  they  can  hardly  be  said 
to  have  been  underpaid.  To  the  reader  of  to-day 
their  writing  seems  so  empty  that  we  wonder  how  it 
could  have  been  deemed  a  misfortune  to  be  damned 
by  such  ignorant  judges.  On  the  appearance  of 
Gray's  Elegy  the  critic  of  the  Monthly  ventures 
only  the  opinion  that  "the  excellence  of  this  little 
poem  may  compensate  for  its  lack  of  quantity."  The 
Bentley  edition,  two  years  later,  moved  him  to  enthu- 
siasm by  the  "head  and  tail  pieces  with  which  each 
poem  is  adorned,  which  are  of  uncommon  excellence, 
the  Melancholy  in  particular  being  exquisite."  Oc- 
casionally, and  especially  toward  the  close  of  the 
century,  a  new  author  is  greeted  with  something  like 
intelligent  recognition.  The  Kilmarnock  edition 
of  Burns,  for  example,  by  some  rare  good  luck,  was 
reviewed  by  some  one  able  to  discern,  under  the 

4 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

Scottish  dialect,  —  which  he  calls  disgusting,  —  the 
genius  of  a  new  kind  of  poet.  But,  as  a  rule,  it  is 
difficult  to  discern  any  relation  between  the  approval 
of  the  critic  and  the  quality  of  the  work.  And  there 
is  seldom  anything  to  break  the  deadly  dulness  of 
the  writing  save  the  rather  spirited  comments  which 
each  editor  now  and  then  bestows  upon  the  other. 
For  they  were  always  at  loggerheads.  "  The  Monthly 
Review"  said  Griffiths,  a  year  after  the  Critical 
was  founded,  "is  not  written  by  physicians  without 
practice,  authors  without  learning,  men  without 
decency,  and  gentlemen  without  manners. "  Smollett, 
editor  of  the  Critical,  rejoined  with  similar  urbanity: 
"The  Critical  Review  is  not  written  by  a  parcel  of 
obscure  hirelings  under  the  restraint  of  a  bookseller 
and  his  wife.  The  writers  for  the  Critical  are  un- 
connected with  booksellers  and  unawed  by  old 
women."  *  Making  allowance  for  editorial  heat, 
each  Review  seems  to  have  characterized  the  other 
not  very  unfairly. 

With  only  these  senile  rivals  in  the  field,  the  sudden 
and  phenomenal  success  of  the  Edinburgh  Review 
is  no  marvel.  The  familiar  story  of  the  meeting  of 
those  three  eager  but  impecunious  Edinburgh  stu- 
dents, Sydney  Smith,  Brougham,  and  Jeffrey,  when 
the  Edinburgh  Review  was  conceived,  is  a  classic  of 
literary  history,  and  deserves  to  be.  For  the  Edin- 

1  Forster's  Life  of  Goldsmith,  Book  II,  Ch.  i. 

5 


A   GROUP   OF    ENGLISH    ESSAYISTS 

burgh  was  essentially  a  new  thing.  The  idea  seems 
to  have  been  an  unpremeditated  suggestion  of  Syd- 
ney Smith's;  there  had  been  no  happier  literary 
inspiration  since  Richard  Steele  hit  upon  the  plan  of 
the  Taller,  nor  any  more  pregnant  with  results  for 
our  later  prose  literature.  The  three  young  enthu- 
siasts were  scholars  and  gentlemen,  and  they  took 
their  Review  out  of  Grub  Street  at  once.  At  first, 
indeed,  it  was  proposed  that  the  writers  of  articles 
should  have  no  remuneration  at  all;  that  "it  should 
be,"  as  the  biographer  of  Jeffrey  puts  it,  "all  gentle- 
man and  no  pay."  But  this  was  thought  to  be  a 
little  too  quixotic,  and  the  wiser  rule  was  adopted  that 
all  contributors  should  be  required  to  take  pay,  and 
should  be  paid  like  gentlemen.  The  papers  were  to 
be  much  longer  than  those  in  the  old  Reviews ;  and, 
while  they  still  retained  the  form  of  a  review  of  a 
book  or  books,  instead  of  being  a  mere  list  of  quota- 
tions with  a  little  commonplace  comment,  they  were 
animated  discussions  of  important  subjects  of  con- 
temporary interest,  for  which  the  books  under  notice 
served  merely  as  a  text.  The  writers  evidently  had 
opinions  of  their  own:  sometimes  a  little  arrogant, 
sometimes  a  little  shallow,  but  at  all  events  not 
merely  perfunctory ;  and  they  knew  how  to  set  forth 
those  opinions  with  the  spirit  and  the  style  of  gentle- 
men. In  literary  matters  the  new  Review  was 
thought  brilliant  and  magisterial;  and  in  politics, 

6 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

at  a  time  when  conservatism  was  having  everything 
its  own  way,  these  young  men  dared,  if  somewhat 
cautiously,  to  avow  pronouncedly  liberal  opinions. 

It  is  true  that  the  reader  of  to-day  who  turns  over 
the  early  volumes  of  the  Edinburgh  runs  the  risk  of 
finding  the  luminary  not  quite  so  brilliant  as  the  ac- 
counts of  its  reception  have  led  him  to  expect.  There 
is  certainly  not  so  much  dash  and  audacity  in  the 
opening  numbers  as  one  would  suppose  from  the 
surprise  and  indignation  they  excited.  The  writers 
seem  rather  to  assume  a  dignified  assurance  of 
manner.  But  any  one  who  prepares  himself  by  a 
short  course  of  reading  in  what  called  itself  criticism 
before  1800  will  find  the  most  homiletical  passages 
of  the  Review  "stick  fiery  off  indeed."  And  it  must 
be  remembered  that  there  is  not  much  duller  reading 
to  be  found  on  earth  than  that  between  the  covers  of 
any  Review  a  century  old,  with  its  pother  over  ques- 
tions settled  three  generations  ago,  and  over  books 
and  men  alike  gathered  now  to  a  forgotten  past. 

It  is  a  more  serious  charge  against  these  early 
volumes  of  the  Edinburgh  and  of  the  Quarterly 
Review,  established  in  1807,  that  they  contain  little 
or  nothing  of  permanent  value  as  literature.  Yet 
this,  too,  was  inevitable.  Perhaps  the  most  im- 
portant service  of  the  two  Reviews  was  the  intelli- 
gent guidance  of  opinion  on  public  affairs.  By 
far  the  larger  number  of  the  articles  were  on  such 

7 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

subjects.  But  any  periodical  devoting  its  attention 
so  largely  to  current  political  questions  of  the  hour 
must  be  content  to  see  most  of  its  writing  pass  into 
that  wallet  wherein  Time  puts  alms  for  oblivion. 
The  article  that  is  timely  is  seldom  immortal.  Only 
some  unusual  intensity,  like  Swift's,  or  some  unusual 
philosophic  vision  like  Burke's,  can  give  to  writing 
on  such  themes  lasting  value.  And  none  of  the  early 
reviewers  had  either  of  these  qualifications  in  any 
high  degree. 

For  the  literary  criticism,  which  occupied  consider- 
able space  in  both  Reviews,  there  is,  perhaps,  a  little 
more  to  be  said.  The  new  Reviews  doubtless  did 
something  to  raise  the  quality  of  literary  criticism. 
With  their  pretensions  they  could  not  afford  to  utter 
partial,  hasty,  ill-considered  verdicts.  Criticism 
was  forced  to  justify  its  decisions,  and  to  look  about 
for  some  general  principles.  Doubtless  nothing  like 
a  science  of  criticism  was  elaborated  —  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  there  is  any  such  a  science ;  but 
the  Reviews  at  least  demanded  from  the  critic  care- 
ful reading,  instructed  judgment,  and  some  definite 
views  as  to  the  grounds  of  literary  excellence.  They 
were,  as  has  been  said,  a  kind  of  college  of  criticism. 
Yet  much  of  the  resulting  work  was  either  very  com- 
monplace or  very  perverse.  The  Reviews  certainly 
made  some  notorious  mistakes.  But  critics,  like  the 
rest  of  us,  are  very  fallible,  and  their  worst  mistakes 

8 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

might  be  pardoned  them  if  it  could  be  shown  that 
they  had  often  introduced  to  public  notice  genius 
not  yet  recognized,  or  removed  unworthy  prejudice, 
or  anticipated  in  any  way  the  verdict  of  the  next 
generation.  But  that  the  Reviews  rendered  any  such 
service,  between  1800  and  1825,  is  very  doubtful.  A 
careful  reading  of  all  the  critical  notices  in  the 
Edinburgh  and  Quarterly  during  these  years  will 
prove  that  they  usually  followed  the  public  taste, 
occasionally  opposed  it,  but  never  led  it.  They 
echoed  the  popular  admiration  for  Scott  and  Byron ; 
but  the  other  three  great  poets,  Wordsworth,  Shelley, 
and  Keats,  won  recognition  in  spite  of  their  neglect 
and  abuse.  Jeffrey's  persistent  attacks  upon  Words- 
worth are  matter  of  familiar  knowledge,  and  unques- 
tionably did  something  to  retard  the  poet's  fame; 
they  set  a  fashion  not  yet  quite  outgrown.  From 
1815  to  1837  neither  Review  has  anything  to  say  of 
Wordsworth :  having  made  up  their  verdict  of  con- 
demnation, they  refuse  to  alter  or  even  to  repeat  it. 
Everybody  remembers  that  the  Quarterly,  "so  savage 
and  tartarly,"  had  the  blame  of  killing  John  Keats; 
while  the  Edinburgh  had  no  word  of  recognition  for 
him,  and  only  broke  silence  in  1820  when  his  brief 
career  was  closed.  Shelley  was  abused  by  the 
Quarterly  through  three  violent  articles,  and  the  cau- 
tious Edinburgh  did  not  venture  a  word  of  him 
until  1824  —  two  years  after  he  was  dead. 

9 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Yet,  after  all,  the  most  perverse  literary  criticism 
is  not  without  value.  It  at  least  calls  attention  to 
the  book.  Probably  the  poet  himself  would  rather 
be  damned  than  ignored.  And  by  the  discussion  of 
faults  and  merits,  even  by  the  opposition  he  pro- 
vokes, the  critic  does  something  to  educate  public 
taste;  the  collision  of  opposite  opinions  generates  a 
kind  of  literary  atmosphere  and  not  infrequently 
evolves  something  like  critical  principles.  Had  it 
not  been  for  the  blind  dogmatism  of  the  Edinburgh, 
we  might  never  have  had  Coleridge's  Biographia 
Literaria.  The  criticism  of  the  last  hundred  years, 
begun  by  these  Reviews,  has  certainly  done  much  to 
render  public  interest  in  literature  more  general  and 
more  intelligent,  and  thus  to  raise  the  standard  of 
production. 

II 

It  must  be  admitted  that  in  all  this  early  critical 
writing  there  are  but  very  few  papers  that  will  find  a 
place  among  English  classics.  Southey  furnished 
to  the  Quarterly  a  body  of  solid  and  sensible  prose 
writing,  mostly  on  political  subjects,  and  all  of  it 
now  dusty  and  dead.  Gifford,  the  editor  of  the 
Quarterly,  was  a  dull-sighted,  thick-skinned,  heavy- 
handed  critic,  with  little  acumen  and  no  delicacy, 
who  richly  deserved  the  flogging  he  got  from  Hazlitt. 
He  liked  to  pose  as  a  literary  judge  and  executioner, 

10 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

but  he  wrote  comparatively  little  himself,  and  that 
little  was  never  of  much  value.  Of  the  Edinburgh 
men,  Brougham,  though  a  vigorous  and  careless 
writer,  was  never  ambitious  of  literary  repute.  Syd- 
ney Smith  was  unsurpassed  as  a  wit,  raconteur, 
letter-writer;  but  his  papers  in  the  Edinburgh  are 
mostly  on  ecclesiastical  and  political  topics,  and  only 
two  or  three  of  them  show  him  at  his  best.  The  critic 
among  the  reviewers  was  Francis  Jeffrey.  From 
1802  to  about  1830  he  was  accounted  beyond  ques- 
tion the  first  of  literary  critics.  As  the  century 
advanced,  his  fame  declined.  His  obstinate  and  con- 
temptuous depreciation  of  Wordsworth  was  remem- 
bered against  him  when  the  poet  had  come  to  his  own. 
There  were  a  good  many  irreverent  people  of  the 
later  generation  who  thought  his  criticism,  when 
not  commonplace,  merely  smart.  Yet  as  late  as 
1867  Carlyle  pronounced  him  "  by  no  means  supreme 
in  criticism  or  in  anything  else ;  but  it  is  certain  that 
no  critic  has  appeared  among  us  since  worth  naming 
beside  him."  And  only  the  other  day,  in  an  able 
and  discriminating  study,  Professor  Gates  *  was  pro- 
testing against  the  neglect  of  Jeffrey's  good  work  in 
Jeffrey's  own  famous  words  "This  will  never  do!" 

It  is  easy  to  understand  Jeffrey's  contemporary 
popularity.  In  the  first  place,  he  wrote  a  clear, 
rapid,  fluent  English.  Doubtless  he  is  sometimes 

1  Three  Studies  in  Literature,  1899. 
II 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

too  fluent  and  makes  a  little  philosophy  go  a  long 
way ;  but  his  style  has  a  metallic  brilliancy,  not  un- 
like that  of  his  admirer,  Macaulay.  He  knows  how 
to  say  telling  things,  and  he  has  infinite  store  of  illus- 
tration. Then,  too,  like  Macaulay,  he  is  always 
cock-sure  —  which  is  pleasing  in  a  critic.  His 
sweeping  assertions,  his  lavish  use  of  the  super- 
lative and  the  unusual,  give  to 'his  writing  a  magis- 
terial air  that  most  readers  find  very  satisfying.  Pro- 
vided he  agrees  with  us,  —  and  Jeffrey  never  differed 
boldly  with  current  opinion,  —  we  like  the  critic  to 
tell  us  authoritatively  how  we  ought  to  feel  about 
a  book,  and  why  we  ought  to  feel  so.  We  compli- 
ment ourselves  on  having  reached  substantially  a 
sound  judgment  without  his  aid ;  and  the  loftier  the 
critic,  the  greater  the  compliment  of  his  agreement 
with  us. 

Then  Jeffrey's  criticism  has  always  a  certain  hard 
common  sense.  It  is  clear  and  sane,  level  to  the  com- 
prehension of  everybody.  There  is  nothing  subtle 
in  it.  He  never  goes  much  below  the  surface,  and 
cannot  give  you  those  penetrating  glimpses  that 
sometimes  illuminate  the  whole  of  an  author's  work. 
He  likes  his  meaning  plain  and  his  emotions  familiar. 
Anything  profound,  mystical,  or  even  strikingly 
original  is  likely  to  put  him  out.  He  emerges  from 
the  farther  end  of  one  of  Wordsworth's  long  passages 
of  transcendentalism  blinking  and  angry.  But  the 

12 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

large,  obvious  excellences  of  thought  and  feeling, 
which  all  men  perceive,  he  can  state  and  appraise 
with  intelligence  and  justice.  He  is  best,  therefore, 
on  such  objective  writers  as  Scott;  best  of  all,  I 
think,  on  books  like  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  Memoirs 
or  Pepys'  Diary,  that  present  no  problems,  and 
invite  narrative  treatment  with  copious  illustrative 
quotations.  But  even  in  his  most  unsympathetic 
reviews,  like  those  on  the  Lake  School,  his  opinions, 
however  blind,  have  a  plausibility  that  recommends 
them  to  average  prosaic  common  sense.  He  is  never 
perverse  or  paradoxical  of  set  purpose. 

Jeffrey's  method,  unlike  that  of  most  recent  critics, 
is  dogmatic,  never  exactly  what  we  have  come  to  call 
impressionist.  The  modern  critic  strives  to  suggest 
the  total  effect  upon  himself  of  the  work  under  re- 
view; to  make  you  feel  as  the  work  has  made  him 
feel.  He  is  the  medium  through  which  you  are  to 
be  put  en  rapport  with  the  author.  Jeffrey's  method 
is  altogether  different.  He  does  not  aim  to  give  you 
an  appreciation  of  the  book,  but  an  estimate  of  it. 
This  is  an  intellectual  process,  a  judicial  process,  the 
application  of  principles  to  reach  a  verdict.  All 
Jeffrey's  criticism  is  in  this  manner;  he  is  always 
proving,  expounding,  defending.  This  method 
not  only  tends  to  conventional  decisions,  but  it  is 
unlikely  to  produce  writing  of  the  highest  literary 
quality.  For  it  does  not  appeal  to  our  sympathy, 

13 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

but  to  our  judgment ;  and  it  gives  to  the  critic  little 
room  for  the  play  of  imagination  or  the  expression 
of  his  own  personality. 

It  is  this  method  that  determines  the  favorite  form 
of  Jeffrey's  critical  articles;  for  they  are  nearly  all 
built  on  the  same  plan.  They  begin  with  an  elabo- 
rate introduction,  which  often  takes  up  about  a  third 
of  the  paper.  This  introduction  is  devoted  either 
to  a  r£sum£  of  some  period  of  literary  history  or  to  a 
statement  of  general  principles  on  which  his  specific 
critical  judgments  are  to  be  based ;  then  follows,  for 
the  rest  of  the  paper,  a  detailed  estimate  of  the  book, 
usually  with  copious  excerpts  to  illustrate  and  enforce 
the  verdict.  These  introductions,  when  of  the  his- 
torical sort,  are  usually  correct  in  their  facts,  but  they 
are  superficial  and  show  little  sense  of  the  deeper  re- 
lations of  literature  to  history.  For  instance,  the 
sketch  of  the  course  of  English  poetry  that  precedes 
the  review  of  Ford's  Dramatic  Works  is  an  interest- 
ing sketch  of  the  elementary  external  facts  of  English 
literary  history  for  two  centuries;  but  it  is  almost 
entirely  without  those  illuminating  glimpses  that 
prove  keen  critical  insight,  and  it  gives  you  no  clear 
notion  of  the  ways  in  which  the  changing  national 
life  embodies  itself  in  literature.  In  the  instance 
mentioned,  as  in  some  others,  the  first  part  of  the 
essay  seems  to  have  little  connection  with  the  rest  — 
the  introduction  does  not  introduce.  Similar  com- 

14 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

ment  might  be  made  on  the  opening  sections  of 
the  reviews  of  Campbell's  English  Poets  and  of 
Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister.  Such  passages  are  of 
interest  as  showing  that  Jeffrey  had  some  dawn- 
ing conception  of  an  historical  method  in  criticism; 
but  he  hardly  had  more.  And  he  seemed  quite  un- 
able to  apply  any  such  method  to  the  literature  of 
his  own  day.  One  would  have  thought,  for  ex- 
ample, that  in  the  poetry  of  Byron  and  its  wonderful 
vogue  all  over  Europe,  Jeffrey  might  have  seen  and 
pointed  out  some  significant  expression  of  the  spirit 
of  the  age ;  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  ever  did. 

The  other  kind  of  introduction,  that  is  taken  up 
with  general  critical  principles,  is  often  still  more 
disappointing.  For  this  formidable  array  of  truths, 
which  would  seem  to  make  the  conclusion  drawn 
from  them  quite  irresistible,  turns  out  on  examination 
to  be  only  the  generalized  expression  of  Francis 
Jeffrey's  personal  likes  and  dislikes,  a  set  of  high 
priori  statements  all  out  of  his  own  head.  He  always 
assumes  himself  to  be  the  representative  of  those 
instructed  few  who  have  authority  on  matters  of 
taste,  and  he  mistakes  the  limitations  of  his  own  ap- 
preciation for  general  laws.  A  good  many  critics,  I 
am  afraid,  do  that ;  but  Jeffrey  shakes  still  more  our 
confidence  in  the  stability  of  his  judgment,  not  merely 
by  the  jaunty  facility  with  which  he  lays  down  gen- 
eral principles,  but  by  his  unlucky  denial,  now  and 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

then,  of  some  statement  assumed  as  an  eternal  truth 
only  a  little  while  before.  Thus,  writing  in  April, 
1810,  an  elaborate  review  on  the  poetry  of  Crabbe, 
he  declares  that  we  are  all  "touched  more  deeply 
as  well  as  more  frequently  in  real  life  with  the  suffer- 
ings of  peasants  than  of  princes  .  .  .  and  an  effort 
to  interest  in  the  feelings  of  the  humble  and  obscure 
will  call  forth  more  deep,  more  numerous,  and  more 
permanent  emotions  than  can  be  excited  by  the  for- 
tunes of  princesses  and  heroes ";  but  four  months 
later,  having  to  explain  the  wonderful  popularity  of 
Scott,  he  decides  that  it  is  mostly  due  to  his  subject, 
and  that  "kings,  warriors,  knights,  outlaws,  min- 
strels, secluded  damsels  and  true  lovers"  are  the  sort 
of  persons  to  appeal  to  the  general  poetic  sense.  And 
his  whole  a  priori  explanation  of  the  conditions  of 
poetic  popularity  was,  two  years  later,  overset  by  the 
meteoric  fame  of  Byron  on  quite  different  grounds. 
In  the  essay  on  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister,  Jeffrey 
declares  that  "human  nature  is  everywhere  funda- 
mentally the  same";  in  the  review  of  Baber's  Me- 
moirs, two  years  later,  he  decides  that  there  is  "a 
natural  and  inherent  difference  in  the  character  and 
temperament  of  the  European  and  Asiatic  races." 
One  who  goes  straight  through  his  essays  will  come 
upon  a  considerable  number  of  such  contradictions. 
Jeffrey's  general  principles  we  suspect  are  mostly 
made  to  order.  He  first  makes  up  his  decision  upon 

16 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

the  work  under  review,  quite  empirically,  and  then 
frames  a  set  of  universal  truths  to  justify  his  deci- 
sion. Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  indeed,  goes  so  far  as  to 
say  that  Jeffrey  had  no  real  taste  of  his  own  at  all, 
and  is  always  asking  himself,  not  "What  do  I  feel?" 
but  "What  is  the  correct  remark  to  make?"  But 
this  seems  to  me  unfair.  Jeffrey,  I  should  rather 
say,  is  always  asking  himself  "Why  ought  I  to  feel 
as  I  do?"  He  has  a  very  genuine,  though  limited, 
appreciation,  and  is  bent  on  justifying  it. 

His  various  likes  and  dislikes  are  curious,  and  often 
apparently  irreconcilable.  Yet  a  little  reflection 
will  show  how  they  all  spring  from  a  common  ground 
of  temperament.  Jeffrey,  if  I  understand  him,  was 
a  singular  combination  —  I  can  hardly  say  compound 
—  of  sense  and  sensibility.  His  emotions  were  easy 
to  get  at;  but  they  were  checked  by  anything  im- 
probable, by  any  shock  to  his  prosaic  sense  of  fact. 
He  sincerely  professed  enthusiastic  admiration  for 
the  romantic  literature  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
especially  the  Elizabethan  drama,  which,  he  says, 
"I  have  long  worshipped  with  a  kind  of  idolatrous 
veneration";  but  for  the  romantic  literature  of  his 
own  day,  he  had  a  very  qualified  liking.  Coleridge's 
Ancient  Mariner  seems  always  to  have  been  to 
him  nothing  better  than  an  old  sailor's  foolish  yarn; 
of  Christabel  he  says  —  or,  at  all  events,  allowed 
the  Edinburgh  to  say,  in  a  review  always  attributed 
c  17 


A    GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

to  him  —  that  "  the  thing  is  utterly  destitute  of  value, 
a  mixture  of  raving  and  drivelling  .  .  .  beneath 
criticism."  His  estimate  of  Scott  was  forced  up 
by  the  pressure  of  public  opinion;  but  of  Marmion 
he  could  say,  in  1808 :  "  We  must  remind  our  readers 
that  we  never  entertained  much  partiality  for  this 
sort  of  composition,  and  ventured  on  a  former  occa- 
sion to  regret  that  an  author  endowed  with  such 
talents  should  consume  them  in  imitation  of  obsolete 
extravagances.  ...  To  write  a  modern  romance 
of  chivalry  seems  to  be  much  such  a  phantasy  as 
to  build  a  modern  abbey  or  an  English  pagoda." 
On  the  other  hand,  for  the  work  of  Crabbe,  the  most 
merciless  of  realists,  he  always  had  a  great  admira- 
tion. Here,  he  said,  are  the  facts  of  life.  These 
farmers  and  shopkeepers  and  workhouse  folk  are 
the  real  thing;  they  "represent  the  common  people 
of  England  pretty  much  as  they  are"  —  not  as  Mr. 
Wordsworth's  philosophical  peddlers,  and  sententious 
leech-gatherers,  and  hysterical  school  masters.  In  a 
word,  Jeffrey  liked  romanticism,  —  as  he  understood 
it,  —  and  he  liked  realism ;  but  he  did  not  like  them 
mixed.  The  romantic  writers,  he  would  say,  may 
fairly  abandon  the  present  and  the  actual;  but  to 
throw  the  hues  of  imagination  on  the  facts  of  common 
life,  as  Wordsworth  attempted  to  do,  this  was  merely 
to  falsify  the  facts  without  illuminating  them. 
So,  too,  he  objects  to  the  conventional  poetic  dic- 
18 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

tion  of  the  eighteenth  century  on  precisely  the  same 
grounds  as  Wordsworth  in  his  famous  preface,  and 
sometimes  in  almost  the  same  words.  He  praises 
Cowper  without  stint  as  the  first  to  abandon  that  dic- 
tion and  to  break  away  from  all  rigid  poetic  conven- 
tion. Yet  not  the  most  finical  classicist  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  could  have  had  greater  dread  of  any- 
thing rude  or  undignified.  Wordsworth's  simplicity 
he  accounts  vulgar  and  puling;  and  he  shudders 
politely  over  such  very  mild  improprieties  as  the 
guard-room  talk  of  the  soldiers  in  the  Lady  of  the 
Lake.  One  wonders  how  he  would  have  survived  a 
reading  of  —  let  us  say  —  some  of  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling's ballads.  The  one  poet  most  entirely  to  his 
liking  was  Campbell,  always  proper  and  always 
sentimental.  "We  rejoice,"  he  says,  in  opening  his 
review  of  the  Gertrude  of  Wyoming,  "to  see  once 
more  a  polished  and  pathetic  poem;"  though  he 
fears  it  may  not  appeal  to  the  taste  of  an  age 
"vitiated  by  babyishness"  (i.e.  of  Wordsworth)  "or 
antiquarism"  (i.e.  of  Scott).  In  a  famous  passage 
in  one  of  the  very  latest  of  his  papers  —  quoted 
by  everybody  who  has  written  anything  on  Jeffrey 
since  Christopher  North  quoted  it  first  in  Blackwood 
—  looking  backward  over  a  generation,  he  concludes 
that  Keats,  Shelley,  Wordsworth,  Crabbe,  are  already 
passing  into  oblivion;  Scott's  novels  have  put  out 
his  poetry;  even  the  splendid  strains  of  Moore  are 

19 


A  GROUP  OF   ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

fading  into  distance  and  dimness,  and  the  blazing 
star  of  Byron  receding  from  its  place  of  pride ;  while 
the  two  poets  who  still  keep  the  laurels  fresh  with  no 
signs  of  fading  are  —  Rogers  and  Campbell ! 

All  of  which  proves,  not  that  Jeffrey  had  no  taste 
of  his  own,  but  that  it  was  narrowed  in  its  range,  on 
the  one  hand  by  a  hard  common  sense,  and  on  the 
other  by  a  rather  prim  sentimentality.  It  was  his 
misfortune  that,  with  his  limited  critical  equipment, 
he  had  to  deal  with  two  or  three  very  original  poets, 
innovators  who  broke  new  paths  for  themselves. 
Of  Shelley  he  never  ventured  any  estimate  at  all. 
The  great  Edinburgh  criticism  of  Shelley  was  written 
by  Hazlitt.  Byron  for  a  time  quite  dazed  him,  as 
he  dazed  everybody.  Before  that  overmastering 
genius,  even  Jeffrey's  insistent  common  sense  was 
blinded.  He  holds  his  breath  over  the  magnilo- 
quence of  Manfred,  and  avers  that  the  dialogue 
which  to  so  many  of  us  now  seems  the  veriest  bathos  is 
"  so  exquisitely  managed  that  all  sense  of  its  impossi- 
bility is  swallowed  up  in  beauty."  The  worst  fault 
of  Manfred  he  declares  to  be,  not  that  it  is  hollow  and 
theatric,  but  that  it  "  fatigues  and  overawes  us  with 
terror  and  sublimity."  He  has  doubtless  suffered 
most  from  his  judgment  of  Wordsworth.  Yet 
to-day  the  most  enthusiastic  Wordsworthian  must 
admit  that  there  is  a  good  deal  of  solemn  rubbish 

20 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

in  Wordsworth,  and  not  a  little  puerility.  Nobody 
is  obliged  to  read  the  whole  of  the  Excursion;  while 
as  for  Goody  Blake  and  Harry  Gill,  Alice  Fell, 
Peter  Bell,  and  some  dozen  or  more  of  that  family, 
no  one  need  much  care  to  save  them  from  the  jaws 
of  devouring  Time.  Our  quarrel  with  Jeffrey  is 
that  he  is  not  content  to  say  of  the  Excursion,  as 
Bottom  says  of  the  play,  "  There  are  things  in  this 
that  will  never  please,"  but  he  must  go  on  to  pick  out 
for  special  reprobation  some  of  the  very  best  passages 
in  the  poem.  So  in  his  flings  at  Wordsworth's  sim- 
plicity, scattered  through  various  essays,  —  as  those 
on  Crabbe  and  on  Burns,  —  he  points  his  ridicule  by 
mentioning  just  the  verses  dearest  to  the  lovers  of 
Wordsworth,  as  the  Leech-Gatherer,  the  Matthew 
poems,  Michael,  and  what  he  calls  "the  stuff  about 
dancing  daffodils."  The  truth  is  that  to  the  prac- 
tical, mundane  intelligence  of  Jeffrey  all  the  most 
characteristic  excellences  of  Wordsworth's  poetry 
were  quite  invisible.  Wordsworth's  feeling  of  an 
all-pervading  spiritual  power  in  nature,  his  resulting 
conviction  of  the  direct  influence  of  nature  upon 
character,  his  notion  of  the  effect  of  the  imagination 
on  moral  culture,  —  all  this  to  Jeffrey  was  mere 
mystical  nonsense.  Wordsworth's  subjective  treat- 
ment of  humble  life,  that,  he  thought,  was  a  whim- 
sical falsification  of  fact.  There  were  no  such  plain 
people.  He  could  not  see  it  was  not  the  peasant  that 

21 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

made  the  poem,  but  Wordsworth's  thought  about  the 
peasant.  Wordsworth's  poetical  theories  may  have 
been  right  or  may  have  been  wrong;  but  before  he 
condemned  them  Jeffrey  should  have  understood 
them. 

In  briefest  summary,  then,  we  may  admit  that  to 
Jeffrey,  rather  than  to  any  other  man,  may  be  given 
the  credit  of  raising  the  critical  essay  to  the  rank  of  a 
recognized  literary  form;  that  his  writing  is  always 
brilliant  and  plausible;  that  his  critical  verdicts  are 
always  clear,  and  if  upon  matters  within  the  range  of 
his  appreciation,  sensible  and  just.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  must  also  be  admitted  that  his  range  of  ap- 
preciation is  limited ;  that  his  impressions  are  often 
worth  more  than  the  dogmas  he  invents  to  justify 
them ;  and  that  a  considerable  part  of  his  fame  was 
due  to  the  immense  and  novel  popularity  of  the  Re- 
view which  raised  him  for  a  time  to  literary  dicta- 
torship almost  like  that  of  Dryden  or  Johnson. 

Ill 

But  important  as  was  the  service  of  the  two  great 
Reviews  in  calling  out  a  new  variety  of  literature,  the 
most  entertaining  prose  written  in  England  between 
1800  and  1825  is  not  to  be  found  in  their  pages.  The 
men  whose  work  we  have  to  consider  in  this  volume 
contributed  but  little  to  the  Reviews,  and  none  of 

22 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

their  best.  The  reason  is  obvious.  The  Review 
did  not  invite  that  kind  of  s  writing  out  of  which 
the  best  literature  is  made.  It  was  not  essays 
they  wanted,  but  extended  reviews  of  contemporary 
questions,  suggested  by  some  current  book  or  books. 
Within  such  limitations  there  was  little  opportunity 
for  original  and  creative  work,  or  even  for  that  play 
of  personal  feeling,  that  intimate  and  subjective 
note,  which  so  often  gives  to  writing  permanent  liter- 
ary charm.  The  whimsical  humors  of  Lamb,  the 
causeries  of  Hazlitt,  the  rambling  reminiscences  of 
De  Quincey,  the  jovial  "Noctes"  of  Wilson,  —  they 
would  each  and  all  have  been  out  of  place  in  the  dig- 
nified pages  of  the  Edinburgh  or  Quarterly.  More- 
over, both  Reviews  had  provoked  the  most  violent 
antagonism  of  some  of  the  best  contemporary  writ- 
ers. Neither  De  Quincey  nor  Lamb  could  ever 
forgive  the  Edinburgh  its  vituperation  of  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge,  the  gods  of  their  early  idolatry; 
while  to  Hazlitt,  the  mere  mention  of  Gifford  and  the 
•Tory  Quarterly  was  a  red  rag  to  set  him  roaring, 
and  the  Edinburgh,  with  its  timid  Whiggism  and 
dread  of  all  radicalism,  seemed  to  him  but  little  better. 
Much  of  the  work  of  these  men,  therefore,  found 
publication,  not  in  the  Reviews  but  in  the  new  Maga- 
zines. The  father  of  all  English  Magazines  was  the 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  founded  by  Edward  Cave 
in  1731,  and  followed  before  1800  by  several  other 

23 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

periodicals  of  similar  character.  All  these  Maga- 
zines, however,  as  their  name  implied,  were  reposi- 
tories for  miscellaneous  matter  —  summaries  of 
recent  news  with  brief  comment,  excerpts  from 
current  literature  or  from  rare  or  curious  books, 
expositions  of  difficult  or  obscure  passages  in  the 
classics  or  in  Scripture,  bits  of  odd  and  striking  fact 
and  incident.  They  afforded  scanty  room  for  origi- 
nal writing  of  any  sort.  Perhaps  the  most  note- 
worthy contribution  to  them  before  1800  was  those 
famous  reports  of  parliamentary  debates  written  by 
Sam  Johnson,  mostly  out  of  his  own  head.  But  in 
1814  the  New  Monthly  Magazine  was  established 
under  the  editorship  of  the  poet  Campbell;  three 
years  later  appeared  that  more  famous  periodical, 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  which  at  once  rivalled  the 
Reviews  in  popularity  and  influence.  In  1821  the 
London  Magazine  was  started  by  John  Scott,  —  the 
brilliant  young  critic  who  fell  in  a  duel  next  year,  — 
with  Charles  Lamb  announced  as  one  of  its  prin- 
cipal contributors.  These  new  Magazines  were 
entirely  unlike  the  dreary  publications  of  that  name 
in  the  preceding  century.  The  new  Reviews  had 
vastly  raised  the  character  and  repute  of  periodical 
writing;  to  write  for  them  now  brought  fame  with 
the  public  and  hard  cash  from  the  publisher.  This 
high  standard  the  new  Magazines  maintained.  They 
commanded  the  pens  of  the  most  brilliant  and  am- 

24 


THE   NEW   ESSAY 

bitious  young  men.  Published  not  quarterly  but 
monthly,  they  were  fresher  and  more  vigorous  than 
the  Reviews;  open  to  good  writing  on  all  subjects, 
they  invited  papers  more  varied,  original,  imagina- 
tive, than  could  find  admission  to  the  Reviews.  Un- 
der such  encouragement  we  get  a  new  type  of  essay. 
The  essays  of  Hazlitt,  De  Quincey,  and  Lamb  com- 
bine the  personal,  intimate  charm  of  Addison's  best 
work  with  a  more  highly  elaborated  form  and  a 
much  wider  range  of  interest.  There  is  no  type  of 
literature  more  altogether  delightful;  and  there  are 
no  better  specimens  of  the  type  than  in  the  work  of 
the  writers  we  have  to  consider  in  the  following  pages. 


WILLIAM  HAZLITT 


ANY  sketch  of  William  Hazlitt  may  fitly  begin 
with  an  extract  from  his  most  familiar  essay  —  the 
most  delightful  essay  of  personal  reminiscence  in  the 
English  language.  It  is  the  story  of  his  spiritual 
birth. 

"  My  father  was  a  dissenting  minister,  at  Wem,  in 
Shropshire;  and  in  the  year  1798  (the  figures  that 
compose  the  date  are  to  me  like  the  '  dreaded  name  of 
Demogorgon')  Mr.  Coleridge  came  to  Shrewsbury 
to  succeed  Mr.  Rowe  in  the  spiritual  charge  of  a 
Unitarian  congregation  there.  He  did  not  come  till 
late  on  the  Saturday  afternoon  before  he  was  to 
preach ;  and  Mr.  Rowe,  who  himself  went  down  to  the 
coach  in  a  state  of  anxiety  and  expectation,  to  look 
for  the  arrival  of  his  successor,  could  find  no  one  at 
all  answering  the  description  but  a  round-faced  man, 
in  a  short  black  coat  (like  a  shooting  jacket)  which 
hardly  seemed  to  have  been  made  for  him,  but  who 
seemed  to  be  talking  at  a  great  rate  to  his  fellow- 
passengers.  Mr.  Rowe  had  scarce  returned  to  give 

26 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

an  account  of  his  disappointment,  when  the  round- 
faced  man  in  black  entered,  and  dissipated  all  doubts 
on  the  subject  by  beginning  to  talk.  He  did  not  cease 
while  he  stayed;  nor  has  he  since,  that  I  know  of. 
He  held  the  good  town  of  Shrewsbury  in  delightful 
suspense  for  three  weeks  that  he  remained  there, 
'  fluttering  the  proud  Salopians  like  an  eagle  in  a 
dove-cote/  and  the  Welsh  mountains  that  skirt 
the  horizon  with  their  tempestuous  confusion,  agree 
to  have  heard  no  such  mystic  sounds  since  the  days  of 

"  '  High-born  HoePs  harp  or  soft  Llewellyn's  lay.' 

As  we  passed  along  between  Wem  and  Shrewsbury, 
and  I  eyed  their  blue  tops  seen  through  the  wintry 
branches,  or  the  red  rustling  leaves  of  the  sturdy 
oak  trees  by  the  roadside,  a  sound  was  in  my  ears  as 
of  a  Syren's  song;  I  was  stunned,  startled  with  it, 
as  from  deep  sleep;  but  I  had  no  notion  then  that 
I  should  ever  be  able  to  express  my  admiration  to 
others  in  motley  imagery  or  quaint  allusion,  till  the 
light  of  his  genius  shone  into  my  soul,  like  the  sun's 
rays  glittering  in  the  puddles  of  the  road." 

And  then  follows  the  account  of  Coleridge's  ser- 
mon, next  day :  — 

"  For  myself,  I  could  not  have  been  more  delighted 
if  I  had  heard  the  music  of  the  spheres.  Poetry  and 
Philosophy  had  met  together.  Truth  and  Genius 
had  embraced,  under  the  eye  and  with  the  sanction 

27 


A  GROUP   OF  ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

of  religion.  This  was  even  beyond  my  hopes.  I  re- 
turned home  well  satisfied.  The  sun  that  was  still 
laboring,  pale  and  wan,  through  the  sky,  obscured  by 
thick  mists,  seemed  an  emblem  of  the  good  cause; 
and  the  cold  dank  drops  of  dew,  that  hung  half 
melted  on  the  beard  of  the  thistle,  had  something 
genial  and  refreshing  in  them ;  for  there  was  a  spirit 
of  hope  and  youth  in  all  nature,  that  turned  every- 
thing into  good." 

It  is  dangerous  to  begin  quoting  Hazlitt ;  one  never 
knows  when  to  stop.  Better  even  than  these  first 
paragraphs  are  the  later  portions  of  this  charming 
essay,  describing  that  visit  of  the  following  spring 
when  the  young  Hazlitt  tramped  three  days  through 
mud  and  mire  to  see  the  god  of  his  idolatry  at  home 
in  the  Nether-Stowey  cottage ;  was  taken  by  Cole- 
ridge to  see  Wordsworth  at  the  Alfoxden  House  hard 
by;  discussed  with  Coleridge  everything  in  heaven 
and  earth,  and  heard  Wordsworth  read  in  solemn 
chant  his  yet  unpublished  Lyrical  Ballads;  lived  for 
three  exalted  weeks  in  such  companionship,  returning 
often  on  evenings  from  Alfoxden  to  Stowey  by  the 
lovely  wooded  walk,  when  the  nightingale  sang  in 
the  leafage,  the  stream  that  slipped  through  the 
green  glimmered  in  the  moonlight,  and  Coleridge's 
voice  sounded  on 

"Of  Providence,  foreknowledge,  will  and  fate, 
Fix'd  fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute." 
28 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

The  whole  picture  still  glows  in  Hazlitt's  pages 
with  the  color  of  his  early  hope  and  dream.  Noth- 
ing that  the  poets  themselves  wrote  in  that  annus 
mirabilis,  1798-1799,  not  even  the  diary  of  Dorothy 
Wordsworth  for  those  months,  can  bring  the  local 
habitation,  the  homely  life  and  high  thinking  of 
Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  so  vividly  to  the  imagina- 
tion as  this  paper  of  Hazlitt's. 

At  the  time  of  this  memorable  visit  Hazlitt  was 
just  completing  his  twentieth  year.  At  first  thought 
it  may  not  be  quite  clear  why  he  always  acknowl- 
edged such  great  obligation  to  Coleridge;  for  his 
own  mind  had  by  this  time  already  taken  its  bent, 
and  he  had  a  full  set  of  radical  opinions,  if  not  yet 
quite  made,  at  least  in  the  making. 

His  radicalism  he  came  honestly  by.  Dissent  and 
revolt,  both  political  and  religious,  ran  in  the  blood 
of  his  family.  An  elder  brother  of  his  father  had 
early  migrated  to  America,  heartily  espoused  the 
cause  of  the  American  rebels,  and  served  with  dis- 
tinction through  the  Revolutionary  War.  Hazlitt's 
father  had  been  educated  in  Glasgow  University 
for  a  Presbyterian  minister;  but  he  soon  devel- 
oped a  more  pronounced  liberalism,  and  before  he 
began  preaching  he  had  become  a  Unitarian.  A 
radical  in  politics  also,  he  formed  the  acquaintance 
of  Benjamin  Franklin,  and  during  all  the  period  of 
the  American  difficulties  found  himself  in  hearty 

29 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

sympathy  with  the  cause  his  brother  had  espoused. 
After  the  conclusion  of  peace  he  came  over  to  Amer- 
ica himself  with  his  family,  minded  to  pass  his  life 
in  the  new  republic  where  liberty  had  taken  up  her 
seat.  He  did  reside  for  more  than  a  year  in  Phila- 
delphia, and  gave  a  course  of  lectures  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania;  thence  he  removed  to  the 
vicinity  of  Boston,  hi  which  city  he  is  said  to  have 
organized  the  first  Unitarian  society  in  America. 
But  Unitarianism  could  not  yet  make  much  headway 
against  Puritan  orthodoxy;  and  no  congregation 
would  quite  venture  to  give  the  young  English 
preacher  a  settlement.  We  may  surmise,  too,  that 
his  studious  and  retiring  temper  found  the  atmos- 
phere of  our  New  England  society  rather  raw.  At 
all  events  he  returned  to  England  in  the  summer  of 
1787,  and  shortly  after  settled  in  the  little  parish  of 
Wem,  in  Shropshire.  Here  he  lived  all  the  rest  of 
his  days,  "repining  but  resigned/7  says  his  son,  "far 
from  the  only  two  things  he  loved  —  talk  about  dis- 
puted texts  of  Scripture,  and  the  cause  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty."  A  fine  type  of  the  learned,  ra- 
tional dissenter,  this  elder  Hazlitt,  in  the  tiny  study 
at  Wem,  surrounded  by  his  tall  folios,  or  hi  the  garden 
gathering  "broccoli  plants  and  kidney  beans  of  his 
own  rearing,"  his  imagination  far  away  in  dreams  of 
patriarchal  eld,  yet  now  and  then  waking  to  some 
stout  utterance  in  behalf  of  tolerance  and  liberty  to- 

30 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

day.  He  survived  to  the  venerable  age  of  eighty- four ; 
and  when  the  end  came,  says  his  daughter,  "he  made 
no  complaint,  nor  did  he  give  one  groan,  but  went  on 
talking  of  glory,  honor,  and  immortality  to  the  end." 
From  him  his  son  inherited,  along  with  his  specula- 
tive, introspective  habit,  a  certain  largeness  of  imagi- 
nation and  a  sense  of  the  high  solemnities  of  life. 
When  Hazlitt's  writing  is  at  its  very  best,  we  may  feel 
in  its  stately  rhythm  and  its  sublime  imagery  the 
moving  of  his  father's  spirit. 

It  was,  however,  the  father's  love  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty  that  showed  earliest  in  the  young 
Hazlitt.  His  first  printed  article,  a  letter  to  a  Shrews- 
bury newspaper  in  1791,  was  an  indignant  rebuke  of 
the  intolerant  churchmen  who  sympathized  with  the 
Birmingham  mob  that  had  just  burned  down  the 
house  of  Dr.  Priestley.  The  breadth  of  view  and  force 
of  statement  in  this  paper,  by  a  boy  of  thirteen,  was 
very  remarkable.  The  years  from  fourteen  to 
twenty-one  are  probably  the  determining  period  of 
every  man's  life.  For  Hazlitt  they  certainly  were. 
Like  so  many  men  of  generous  temper,  he  had  fallen 
under  the  spell  of  the  French  Revolution,  which  was 
unrolling  its  stupendous  drama  during  just  those 
years  from  1792  to  1799,  when  his  opinions  were 
a-forming.  Before  he  was  seventeen  he  had  drawn 
out  a  scheme  of  civil  and  criminal  legislation  based 
on  the  most  doctrinaire  notions  of  individual  rights. 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

For  three  or  four  years,  thereafter,  he  was  striving 
in  vain  to  put  into  satisfactory  literary  shape  a  treatise 
on  the  Principles  of  Human  Action  which  should 
prove  "the  natural  disinterestedness  of  human 
nature."  The  central  thesis  of  this  speculation  he 
conceived  to  be  an  important  discovery  of  his  own  — 
certainly  it  would  be  important,  if  true.  But  the 
course  of  history  in  those  years,  one  thinks,  must 
have  strained  his  theory  rather  severely  sometimes. 
The  early  excesses  and  atrocities  of  the  Revolution, 
the  worst  of  which  occurred  while  he  was  in  his  early 
teens,  could  not  change  his  convictions,  but  (though 
there  is  no  record  of  his  experience  in  those  years) 
I  suspect  they  did  sometimes  becloud  his  enthusiasm. 
Jndeed,  Hazlitt  was  always  distrustful  of  enthusiasm. 
He  had  no  liking  for  the  raw  multitude,  and  all  his 
days  had  some  trouble  to  keep  his  sympathies  on 
good  terms  with  his  principles.  He  confessed,  later 
in  life,  that  he  had  been  staggered  in  his  devotion  to 
republicanism  and  puritanism,  when  he  reflected  that, 
though  there  was  plenty  of  both  in  America,  it  was 
yet  doubtful  whether  in  all  the  United  States,  from 
Boston  to  Baltimore,  —  his  geography  wouldn't  let 
him  go  farther  south,  —  we  could  produce  a  single 
head  like  one  of  Titian's  noblemen,  nurtured  in 
all  the  pride  of  aristocracy  and  all  the  blindness  of 
popery.  He  never  shared  Wordsworth's  interest  in 
humble  folk,  and  declared  that  those  Cumberland 

32 


WILLIAM    HAZLITT 

ploughmen  and  peddlers  were  low  company  that, 
for  himself,  he  did  not  care  to  meet.  Ignorance  is 
always  bad  enough,  he  said,  but  rustic  ignorance  is 
intolerable.  Nor  did  the  fact  that  common  folk  were 
hardly  treated  suffice  to  make  them  interesting. 
"  Never  pity  people,"  he  says,  "  because  they  are  ill- 
used;  they  only  wait  the  opportunity  to  use  others 
just  as  ill."  Hate  the  oppressor  and  prevent  the 
evil  if  you  can,  but  do  not  fancy  there  is  any  virtue 
in  being  oppressed.  The  unfortunate  are  not  a  jot 
more  amiable  than  their  neighbors.  Such  cynical 
sentiments,  to  be  sure,  come  from  the  later  years  of 
disillusion;  but  Hazlitt  was  never  really  a  democrat. 
He  always  hated  the  kings  more  than  he  loved  the 
peoples. 

With  this  temper  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand 
how,  by  1798,  his  political  devotion  had  already 
begun  to  fix  itself  upon  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  By  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  Napoleon  had 
crushed  the  sanguinary  factions  of  the  Revolution 
into  order;  he  had  raised  the  young  French  republic 
out  of  chaos  to  a  pitch  of  eminence  above  the  highest 
dream  of  Richelieu;  he  had  liberated  Italy  —  or 
said  he  had ;  he  had  shaken  every  throne  on  the  con- 
tinent, and  stood  for  the  moment  before  all  the  world, 
the  foe  of  all  the  elder  tyranny,  the  champion  of  an 
ordered,  victorious  liberty.  Here  was  a  noble  figure, 
"who  nothing  common  did  nor  mean";  worthy 
D  33 


A   GROUP   OF    ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

to  march  at  the  front  of  the  new  age.  For  William 
Hazlitt,  he  was  ever  thereafter  the  hero  who  had 
broken  up  the  old  order,  the  protagonist  in  the  cause 
of  the  Peoples  against  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings. 

And  it,  was  for  somewhat  analogous  reasons  that 
the  young  Hazlitt  welcomed  Coleridge  so  gladly. 
In  those  years  he  was  an  eager  student  of  the  best 
things  in  letters ;  but  here  again  he  found  a  clash 
between  his  tastes  and  his  principles.  The  ablest 
contemporary  literature,  the  eloquence,  the  imagina- 
tion, he  had  to  own,  were  on  the  wrong  side.  He 
was  quick  enough  to  see  that  incomparably  the  best 
prose  written  in  his  time  was  in  Burke's  great  pam- 
phlet against  the  French  Revolution.  "From  the 
first  time  I  ever  cast  my  eye  on  anything  of  Burke's," 
he  writes,  "I  said  to  myself,  this  is  true  eloquence. 
All  other  styles  seemed  to  me  pedantic  or  infinitesi- 
mal; Burke's  was  forked  and  playful  as  the  light- 
ning." The  doctrine  was  all  wrong,  but  how  im- 
mensely superior  as  literature  was  this  heresy  to  the 
frigid  sermons,  the  meagre  and  acrid  pamphlets  of 
the  other  party.  It  was  then  that  he  met  Coleridge. 
Here,  at  last,  was  the  orator,  the  philosopher,  the 
poet  —  and  on  the  side  of  the  angels !  For  those 
were  the  days  of  Coleridge  young,  full  of  all  glad 
enthusiasm,  and  with  a  gift  of  speech  to  make  the 
most  abstruse  philosophy  sound  musical  as  Apollo's 
lute.  It  is  easy  to  understand  what  strengthening 

34 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

of  resolve,  what  stimulus  to  independent  thinking, 
what  large  though  vague  ideals,  this  man  Coleridge 
would  give  to  the  lonely  and  isolated  young  thinker. 
Not,  however,  that  there  were  any  immediate  re- 
sults to  show  for  it.  The  results  were  to  come  some 
twenty  years  later.  Throughout  the  period  of  his 
early  manhood  Hazlitt  was,  indeed,  trying  hard  to  put 
his  notions  on  paper;  but  without  success.  He 
averred  that  he  had  thought  for  eight  years  without 
being  able  to  write  a  single  page.  This  sterility  was 
due,  in  part,  doubtless,  to  his  own  exacting  literary 
judgment,  in  part  to  his  inexperience  and  the  im- 
maturity of  the  conceptions  he  was  trying  to  express ; 
but  it  was  due,  most  of  all,  to  the  fact  that  he  was 
wrestling  with  subjects  that,  however  interesting  to 
him  at  the  time,  were  not  really  congenial.  Hazlitt 
was  an  acute  and  subtle  thinker,  but  he  was  never  a 
systematic  thinker.  I  should  say  that  with  all  his 
fondness  for  speculation  he  never  had  the  gift  of 
philosophic  exposition.  He  is  delightful  whenever, 
as  in  his  later  essays,  he  lets  himself  go;  and  many 
really  profound  truths  of  human  nature  slip  into  the 
stream  of  fancy,  and  sentiment,  and  half-cynical 
observation  that  he  pours  out  with  no  care  for  method. 
In  fact,  he  never  writes  well  save  when  he  is  writing 
of  himself.  But  in  those  early  efforts  he  was  trying 
to  be  impersonal  and  philosophic.  The  Argument 
in  Favor  of  the  Natural  Disinterestedness  of  the 

35 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH    ESSAYISTS 

Human  Mind,  —  which  did  not  get  published 
until  1805,  —  unlike  his  later  work,  is  dry  as  a  re- 
mainder biscuit.  If  Hazlitt  found  it  difficult  to  write, 
we  find  it  quite  as  difficult  to  read.  Nor  do  the 
philosophers  have  much  to  say  for  it.  The  central 
theme  of  the  treatise  Hazlitt  thought  to  be  an  impor- 
tant discovery  of  his  own ;  namely,  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  "as  an  innate  and  necessary  selfishness." 
Which  may  or  may  not  be  true,  Hazlitt's  argument 
thereupon  not  being  lucid  to  the  non-metaphysical 
mind;  but  as  he  admits  "a  practical  self-interest 
arising  out  of  habit  and  circumstances"  which  may 
serve  as  well  as  the  innate  article,  the  " discovery" 
would  not  seem  very  startling.  Hazlitt  himself  al- 
ways had  a  fondness  for  the  book, — I  suppose  because 
it  had  cost  him  so  much  labor,  —  and  he  reworked 
the  substance  of  it  in  two  of  his  later  essays. 

Hopeless  of  success  in  literature,  Hazlitt  tried 
art.  His  elder  brother  was  a  portrait  painter  of 
some  promise,  and  he  resolved  to  adopt  the  same 
profession.  In  1802,  after  the  peace  of  Amiens, 
he  went  over  to  Paris  to  study  in  the  Louvre,  just 
then  enriched  by  Napoleon's  plunder  from  all  the 
galleries  of  Europe.  But  in  this  art,  too,  he  felt  his 
powers  fell  far  short  of  his  ideals,  and  about  1806, 
after  years  of  patient  effort,  he  laid  down  his  brush. 
Yet  those  years  were,  perhaps,  among  the  most 
profitable  of  his  life.  He  was  not  only  preparing 

36 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

himself  to  be  as  good  a  critic  of  art  as  of  literature, 
but  he  was  gaining  a  delicacy  of  perception  and  a 
keenness  of  appreciation  for  all  the  outward  charm 
of  the  world  that  was  to  make  him  one  of  the  most 
picturesque  of  writers.  And  it  is  perhaps  not  fanci- 
ful to  say  that  his  constant  endeavor  as  a  portrait 
painter  to  read  the  meaning  of  faces  had  something 
to  do  with  his  remarkable  power  in  the  analysis  and 
interpretation  of  character,  shown  in  his  later  writ- 
ings. 

But  whatever  the  profit  of  those  years  of  appren- 
ticeship to  art,  they  certainly  were  the  happiest 
years  of  Hazlitt's  life.  No  one  can  read  his  delight- 
ful essay  On  the  Pleasures  of  Painting  without 
feeling  that  he  was  doing  what  he  loved  to  do.  For 
he  loved  to  live  by  himself,  with  the  companionship 
of  those  forms  of  nature  and  those  works  of  art  that 
will  not  quarrel  nor  betray.  His  work  as  a  painter 
called  him  out  of  the  temper  of  irritation  to  which 
he  was  naturally  inclined,  out  of  the  meaner  accom- 
paniments of  controversy,  and  gave  him  for  a  time 
a  certain  poise  and  quiet.  For  beauty  always  has 
one  advantage  over  truth  as  an  object  of  contempla- 
tion —  you  know  it  when  you  see  it ;  you  cannot 
doubt  or  dispute  over  it. 

Hazlitt's  mind  was  ripening  in  all  ways  during  the 
years  from  1798  to  1808;  by  the  end  of  that  decade 
it  had  got  its  growth.  The  thirty  or  forty  books 

37 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

that  were  to  be  his  life-long  companions  —  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  Rousseau,  the  eighteenth-century 
English  essayists  and  writers,  to  name  only  those 
he  liked  most  —  he  had  got  by  heart ;  for  the  rest 
of  his  life  he  kept  on  reading  them  over  and  over. 
He  used  to  say  in  later  life  that  he  had  not  read  a 
new  book  since  he  was  thirty.  His  political  notions, 
too,  had  taken  their  final  shape,  and  had  subtly 
linked  themselves  with  the  brightest  memories  of 
that  golden  time.  In  the  essay  On  the  Pleasures 
of  Painting  he  tells  us  with  a  thrill  of  longing  and 
recollection  how  he  finished  one  of  his  first  portraits 
on  the  day  which  brought  news  of  the  battle  of 
Austerlitz. 

"I  walked  out  in  the  afternoon,  and  as  I  returned, 
saw  the  evening  star  set  over  a  poor  man's  cottage, 
with  other  thoughts  and  feelings  than  I  shall  ever 
have  again.  Oh,  for  the  revolution  of  the  great 
Platonic  year,  that  those  days  might  come  over  again ! 
I  could  gladly  sleep  out  the  intervening  365,000 
years!" 

One  thinks,  by  contrast,  of  the  great  Pitt,  on  hear- 
ing the  same  news,  saying  in  despair,  "Fold  up  the 
map  of  Europe,"  and  sinking  back  to  die.  To  the 
statesman  it  was  the  dark  close  of  a  great  chapter 
of  history;  to  the  young  painter  the  triumphal 
opening  of  a  new  one.  In  fact,  I  think  one  reason 
why  Hazlitt  held  so  obstinately  to  his  opinions  was 

38 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

that  they  had  been  identified  with  his  purest  senti- 
ments, hallowed  by  a  thousand  of  the  dearest  asso- 
ciations of  his  youth.  To  deny  or  change  them 
seemed  treachery  to  the  best  impulses  of  his  best 
years. 

Just  what  Hazlitt  was  doing  for  several  years  after 
he  gave  up  painting,  is  not  very  clear.  His  home, 
up  to  about  1808,  seems  to  have  been  with  his 
father  at  Wem ;  but  he  was  much  in  London,  and  in 
1805  he  had  formed  the  acquaintance  of  his  best 
friend,  Charles  Lamb.  For  the  next  twenty  years 
it  was  at  this  quiet  bachelor  fireside  of  Charles  and 
Mary  Lamb  that  he  found  his  tongue  loosened  to 
say  his  best  and  brightest  things.  He  soon  met  all 
of  Lamb's  set,  —  Godwin,  Burney,  Manning,  Rick- 
man,  Dyer,  and  the  rest,  —  and  though  he  was  too 
shy  and  moody  to  be  a  "clubable  man,"  his  face 
came  to  be  familiar  at  Lamb's  Wednesday  nights, 
and  in  some  fortunate  hours  he  could  be  the  most 
brilliant  of  the  company.  Mary  said  he  was  orna- 
mental as  a  Wednesday  man,  but  he  was  more  useful 
on  common  days,  when  he  dropped  in  after  a  quarrel 
or  a  fit  of  the  glooms.  He  had  no  desire  to  extend 
the  circle  of  his  acquaintance,  especially  in  that  half 
of  society  a  young  man  of  twenty-seven  might  have 
been  thought  most  willing  to  know.  Lamb  writes 
to  Wordsworth  in  1806:  "W.  Hazlitt  is  in  town. 
I  took  him  to  see  a  very  pretty  girl  professedly, 

39 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

where  there  were  two  young  girls  —  the  very  head 
and  sum  of  the  Girlery  was  two  young  girls  —  they 
neither  laughed,  nor  sneered,  nor  giggled,  nor  whis- 
pered—  but  they  were  young  girls  —  and  he  sat 
and  frowned  blacker  and  blacker,  indignant  that 
there  should  be  such  a  thing  as  Youth  and  Beauty, 
till  he  tore  me  away  before  supper  in  perfect  misery, 
and  owned  that  he  could  not  bear  young  girls.  They 
drove  him  mad.  So  I  took  him  home  to  my  old  nurse, 
where  he  recovered  perfect  tranquillity.  Indepen- 
dent of  this,  and  as  I  am  not  a  young  girl  myself, 
he  is  a  great  acquisition  to  us."  l 

In  1808,  however,  the  misogynist,  having  no 
visible  means  of  support,  married  —  having  first 
written  a  refutation  of  the  doctrines  of  Malthus. 
The  lady  was  Miss  Sarah  Stoddard,  a  friend  of  the 
Lambs,  who  apparently  had  not  enough  of  either 
youth  or  beauty  to  frighten  Hazlitt's  shyness.  Miss 
Stoddard  was  the  kind  of  a  woman  spoken  of  with 
awe  as  "of  superior  ability";  well  emancipated, 
strong  of  mind  and  body.  She  had,  moreover, 
some  eighty  pounds  a  year,  while  Hazlitt,  as  Lamb 
said,  had  only  what  he  could  claim  from  the  parish. 
In  addition  to  her  income  she  had  a  Lilliputian 
estate  at  Winterslow,  near  Salisbury,  and  there  the 
newly  married  couple  took  up  their  residence.  Four 
years  later,  however,  in  1812,  finding  it  necessary  to 

1  June  26,  1806. 
40 


WILLIAM    HAZLITT 

do  something  for  the  support  of  his  family,  Hazlitt 
came  up  to  London,  and  spent  most  of  his  after 
life  there.  Yet  he  always  had  a  fondness  for  Winter- 
slow.  A  lonely  wayside  inn  on  the  edge  of  the  heath, 
a  mile  from  the  village,  was  the  refuge  to  which,  in 
all  his  later  years,  he  would  flee  when  vexed  by 
society  or  craving  solitude  for  work.  His  very  best 
writing  was  done  there. 

On  coming  up  to  London,  Hazlitt  obtained  a  posi- 
tion on  the  Chronicle  newspaper,  first  as  reporter 
and  then  as  theatrical  critic.  But  it  was  Leigh 
Hunt's  Examiner  that  enabled  him  to  find  his  genius. 
In  1814  Hunt  projected  a  series  of  essays  in  the 
easy  manner  of  Addison  which  should  deal  with  the 
humors,  the  foibles,  the  philosophy  of  daily  life. 
In  these  papers,  afterward  collected  under  the  title 
The  Round  Table,  Hazlitt  first  opened  that  delight- 
ful personal  vein  in  which  all  his  best  work  is  done. 
His  drudgery  on  the  Chronicle  had  shown  him  that 
he  could  write  when  he  must ;  now  for  the  first  time 
he  found  it  easy  to  write.  He  was  morbidly  shy  and 
reserved  in  company,  but  for  that  very  reason  the 
most  unreserved  of  authors  with  the  pen.  The 
man  who  doesn't  dare  to  take  himself  for  granted  in 
society  is  just  the  most  communicative  in  his  study. 
He  isn't  talking  to  you,  he  is  talking  to  himself  — 
and  talking  about  himself.  There  is  criticism,  and 
satire,  and  fancy,  and  philosophy  in  what  Hazlitt 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

writes;  but  it  is  all  in  the  first  person,  all  passed 
through  the  medium  of  his  own  feeling.  It  is  William 
Hazlitt  pouring  himself  out  on  paper. 

After  the  appearance  of  the  Table  Talk  Hazlitt 
was  sure  of  an  audience  and  a  publisher,  and  might 
have  been  secure  from  pecuniary  embarrassment, 
had  he  not  always  obeyed  somewhat  too  literally  the 
Scripture  injunction  to  take  no  thought  for  the 
morrow.  In  the  fifteen  years  that  remained  to  him 
he  produced  a  very  considerable  body  of  literature. 
The  best  of  it  is  in  the  volumes  entitled  Table  Talk 
and  The  Plain  Speaker,  and  in  similar  papers  con- 
tributed to  various  periodicals,  and  collected  by  his 
son  under  the  title  Sketches  and  Essays.  In  1818 
he  gave  two  courses  of  literary  lectures  on  the 
English  Comic  Writers  and  on  the  English  Poets; 
and  in  the  following  year  a  third  course  on  the 
Dramatic  Literature  of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth.  These 
essays  and  lectures,  with  some  other  critical  and 
miscellaneous  writing,  fill  twelve  rather  stodgy  vol- 
umes in  the  latest  edition  of  his  works.  To  these 
we  must  add  what  he  himself  deemed  his  magnum 
opuSj  the  Life  of  Napoleon,  upon  which  he  lavished 
the  toil  of  his  last  years. 

The  life  of  Hazlitt,  after  he  had  once  found  his  pen 
and  his  place,  is  without  noteworthy  external  inci- 
dent, if  we  except  those  growing  out  of  his  domestic 
infelicity.  That  is  not  a  pretty,  nor  —  for  us  —  a 

42 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

very  important  story.  What  perverse  fate  induced 
William  Hazlitt  and  Sarah  Stoddard  to  marry,  no 
man  can  tell;  though  doubtless  Miss  Stoddard 
could  have  given  a  syllogism  for  it  —  she  was  of  that 
sort.  But  Hazlitt  said  in  a  charming  essay,  "I 
love  myself  without  a  reason;  I  would  have  my 
wife  do  so,  too."  Lamb  thought  there  was  some 
love  on  both  sides  at  first,  but  apparently  not 
enough  to  last  long.  There  was  never  any  violent 
rupture,  still  less  any  jealousy  on  either  side  or  any 
cause  for  it;  but  the  very  unconventional  ways  of 
Mrs.  Hazlitt  evidently  got  on  her  husband's  nerves 
a  good  deal,  while  to  a  woman  of  her  large,  red 
health  such  a  man  as  Hazlitt  doubtless  seemed  a 
poor  creature.  After  1819  they  lived  mostly  apart, 
and  in  1822,  by  mutual  consent,  went  up  to  Edin- 
burgh to  make  the  forty  days'  residence  there  neces- 
sary for  a  divorce  under  the  Scottish  law.  Mrs. 
Hazlitt's  journal  during  this  time  shows  a  remarkable 
superiority  to  considerations  of  sentiment.  Hazlitt 
himself,  meantime,  during  one  of  his  periods  of 
bachelor  residence  in  London,  had  fallen  very  pre- 
cipitously in  love  with  a  certain  Sarah  Walker,  the 
daughter  of  a  tailor  in  whose  house  he  was  lodging. 
Probably  a  little  flattered  and  a  little  bewildered  by 
the  attentions  of  so  singular  a  character,  the  girl  did 
not  at  once  refuse  them,  and  Hazlitt's  regard  passed 
at  once  into  something  like  insanity.  Miss  Walker, 

43 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

however,  had  sense  enough  to  see  that  marriage  with 
him  would  be  folly ;  while  he  was  in  Edinburgh  she 
refused  to  correspond  with  him,  and  when  he  re- 
turned to  London,  a  separated  man,  he  found  that 
she  had  wisely  transferred  her  regard  to  an  earlier 
and  younger  suitor.  Hazlitt  thereupon  sat  down 
and  put  the  whole  story  of  his  passion  into  a  book, 
which  in  its  astonishing  frankness  quite  out-Rous- 
seaus  Rousseau.  The  Liber  Amoris  (which  Mr. 
Le  Gallienne  took  needless  trouble  to  rescue  from 
oblivion  in  a  reprint  some  years  ago)  is  not  exactly 
a  bad  book  —  there  was  nothing  base  in  Hazlitt's 
infatuation;  but  in  its  vulgar  lack  of  all  reserve  it 
is  nearly  as  unpleasant  reading  as  some  of  our 
modern  decadent  novels.  To  say  the  truth,  there 
is,  not  only  here  but  occasionally  elsewhere  in  Haz- 
litt's  explosions  of  petulance  or  of  sentiment,  some- 
thing a  little  under-bred.  He  hadn't  quite  the 
dignified  reticence  of  a  gentleman.  Sarah  Walker 

—  having  once  "  cleansed  his  stuffed  bosom  of  that 
perilous    stuff"    by   publishing    the    Liber    Amoris 

—  he  speedily  forgot.     Next  year,  1824,  he  married 
a    certain    Mrs.    Bridgewater,    of    whom    nothing 
particular  is   known  save  she  had  three  hundred 
pounds  a  year.      On  this  Hazlitt  took  the  conti- 
nental journey  he  had  long  coveted,  to  Paris  (where 
he  met  the  first  Mrs.  Hazlitt  and  gave  her  some  of 
the  second  Mrs.  Hazlitt's  money),  to  Genoa,  Florence, 

44 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

and  Rome.  The  last  part  of  his  wedding  journey, 
however,  he  seems  to  have  taken  alone;  and  when, 
on  his  return  to  England  next  year,  he  wrote  to  his 
wife  asking  her  to  join  him,  she  replied  that  they 
were  now  separated  forever.  From  that  time  Hazlitt 
led  a  rather  hermit-like  life  in  London  and  in  the 
Hut  at  Winterslow,  writing  occasionally  for  the 
magazines  and  for  the  Edinburgh,  and  toiling  hard 
at  his  Life  of  Napoleon.  His  health,  injured  per- 
haps by  his  habit  of  drinking  enormous  quan- 
tities of  strong  tea,  began  to  break,  and  he  died 
in  1830,  at  the  age  of  fifty-two. 

II 

Hazlitt's  last  words  were,  "Well,  I  have  had  a 
happy  life."  This  certainly  seems  at  first  blush 
a  strange  verdict  upon  a  life  full  of  disappointment 
and  complaint.  For  Hazlitt  had  never  mastered 
the  art  of  living  with  men,  still  less  the  art  of  living 
with  woman.  His  best  friends  found  him  sometimes 
very  difficult.  He  was  morbidly  timid  and  sus- 
picious by  nature.  De  Quincey  says  that  if  Hazlitt 
left  some  friend  in  a  room  for  a  few  minutes,  on  his 
return  he  would  look  about  him  with  a  mixed  air  of 
suspicion  and  defiance  as  if  challenging  something 
that  had  been  said  against  him  in  his  absence. 
Leigh  Hunt  used  to  describe  a  shake  of  his  hand  as 

45 


A  GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

something  like  a  fish  tendering  you  his  fin.  His 
face  wore  habitually  a  half -sad,  half -angry  look,  over 
which  some  high  thought  or  noble  feeling  would 
throw  a  sudden  flash  as  of  a  lightning  gleam,  then 
fading  out  again  in  sullen  night.  He  knew  him- 
self the  most  awkward  of  mortals,  and  in  one  of  his 
essays  confesses  that  he  had  never  been  able  to 
come  through  a  door  gracefully.  In  an  admirable 
letter  to  his  son  just  going  away  to  school,  he  says 
with  an  evident  ^twinge  of  memory:  "I  wish  you 
to  learn  Latin,  French,  and  dancing.  I  would 
insist  upon  the  last  more  particularly,  because  it  is 
of  the  greatest  consequence  to  your  success  in  life." 
And  this  moody  sensitiveness  was,  of  course, 
increased  by  the  publicity  that  his  writings  brought 
him.  His  political  opinions  drew  down  upon  his 
head  the  most  virulent  criticism  from  the  Tory 
Quarterly  and  the  Blackwood.  The  whiskey-drinking, 
swash-buckler  reviewers  of  the  Blackwood,  especially, 
assailed  him,  after  their  wont,  with  such  personal 
abuse  that  Mr.  Blackwood  was  forced  to  some  sort 
of  apology,  under  threat  of  a  suit  for  libel.  Such 
attacks  put  Hazlitt  into  a  kind  of  trembling,  angry 
terror,  and  actually  drove  him  for  days  into  seclu- 
sion. Nor  could  he  expect  active  sympathy  from 
any  quarter.  His  old  friends,  he  felt,  had  been 
alienated  by  his  own  political  consistency.  The 
cause  to  which  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  and 

46 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

Southey,  as  well  as  himself,  had  given  their  alle- 
giance a  score  of  years  before,  they  had  now  basely 
deserted.  He  hated  Southey  almost  as  heartily  as 
he  hated  Wellington;  and  he  is  always  lamenting 
over  Coleridge,  as  over  an  archangel  fallen.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  distrusted  all  mere  doctrinaire 
radicals  and  fanatics,  all  loud  declaimers  like  Byron, 
and  for  such  rhapsodical  enthusiasts  as  Shelley,  he 
had  a  dislike  amounting  to  a  positive  contempt. 
Such  men,  he  thought,  had  wrecked  the  Revolu- 
tion at  its  beginning.  As  it  was,  he  felt  himself 
on  most  matters  of  importance  in  a  minority  of  one, 
an  Ishmaelite  with  every  man's  hand  against  him. 
The  one  man  whom  he  did  admire  to  idolatry  was 
the  one  man  whom  all  parties  united  to  fear  and 
to  detest  —  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  Waterloo  closed 
the  chapter  of  his  hopes.  When  the  Congress  of 
Vienna  set  up  the  Bourbon  monarchy  in  France  — 
an  abomination  in  a  desolation  —  and  forced  upon 
prostrate  Europe  the  old  odious  doctrine  of  the 
Divine  Right  of  Kings,  Hazlitt  refused  any  longer 
to  look  to  the  future.  Thereafter  he  solaced  himself 
with  memories  and  with  the  proud  consciousness 
of  his  own  loyalty  to  a  fallen  cause. 

"For  my  part,  I  started  in  life  with  the  French 
Revolution,  and  I  have  lived,  alas !  to  see  the  end 
of  it.  But  I  did  not  foresee  this  result.  My  sun 
arose  with  the  first  dawn  of  liberty,  and  I  did  not 

47 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

think  how  soon  both  must  set.  The  new  impulse  to 
ardor  given  to  men's  minds  imparted  a  congenial 
warmth  and  glow  to  mine ;  we  were  strong  to  run  a 
race  together,  and  I  little  dreamed  that  long  before 
mine  was  set,  the  sun  of  liberty  would  turn  to  blood, 
or  set  once  more  in  the  night  of  despotism.  Since 
then,  I  confess,  I  have  no  longer  felt  myself  young, 
for  with  that  my  hopes  fell." 

This  disappointment  came,  we  shall  remember, 
just  as  his  own  literary  career  was  opening,  and  gave 
a  bitter  taste  to  all  his  success.  Indeed  he  never 
cared  much  for  merely  literary  success.  The  higher 
forms  of  creative  literature  he  knew  himself  unequal 
to ;  the  reviews  and  essays  for  the  magazines  he  con- 
sidered of  little  permanent  value.  He  would  have 
been  pleased  to  render  some  signal  literary  service 
to  a  cause  of  which  he  felt  himself  a  champion 
or  a  martyr;  but  the  only  two  of  his  books  that  he 
prized  few  people  would  read  then  and  nobody  reads 
now,  —  the  essay  on  the  Disinterestedness  of  the 
Human  Mind  and  the  Life  of  Napoleon.  Thus  dis- 
appointed and  embittered,  he  identified  his  disap- 
pointments with  his  principles,  and  persuaded  him- 
self that  he  did  well  to  be  angry.  And  he  could  be 
very  angry.  Burke's  apostasy  drove  him  into  a  kind 
of  a  frenzy:  "That  man  .  .  .  who  has  done  more 
mischief  than  perhaps  any  other  man  in  the  world 

48 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

.  .  .  who  would  have  blotted  out  the  broad,  pure 
light  of  heaven  because  it  did  not  first  shine  in  at 
the  little  Gothic  windows  of  St.  Stephen's  Chapel ! 
.  .  . "  and  he  goes  on  until  his  indignation  fairly  chokes 
him.  Wellington  had  won  Waterloo  because  he  was 
just  stupid  enough  to  sit  still  and  let  his  army  do  what 
it  chose;  Walter  Scott,  like  Bacon,  was  the  " greatest, 
wisest,  meanest  of  mankind";  Gifford  was  a  "low- 
bred, self-taught,  servile  pedant,  a  doorkeeper  and  a 
lacquey  to  learning,"  admirably  qualified  by  a  com- 
bination of  defects  to  be  the  editor  of  the  Quarterly 
Review.  In  some  of  his  angry  and  querulous  moods 
he  manages  to  score  about  all  his  contemporaries. 
Even  Lamb  fell  under  his  displeasure  for  a  time, 
and  Mary  wished  Hazlitt  would  not  hate  mankind 
quite  so  universally. 

Yet,  after  all,  I  think  Hazlitt's  last  words  were  not 
untrue.  For  the  final  impression  one  gets  from 
reading  him  is  that  his  life  was  by  no  means  all  un- 
happy. For  one  thing  he  must  have  got  a  good  deal 
of  pleasure  out  of  his  antipathies.  Nobody  liked 
a  fight  better.  "  Good  nature,"  he  says  somewhere, 
"is  only  another  name  for  stupidity,"  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten  mere  indolence  of  disposition.  Your 
really  amiable  people  are  those  the  world  calls 
disagreeable  —  like  himself.  They  will  not  weakly 
consent  with  you.  They  have  opinions  of  their 
own,  and  the  spirit  to  defend  them,  and  are  willing 
E  49 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

to  sacrifice  even  the  failings  of  their  friends  at  the 
shrine  of  truth.  For  himself,  he  took  care  that  his 
best  friendships  should  not  grow  stagnant  by  long 
standing.  He  owned  that  he  had  quarrelled  with 
all  his  acquaintances  at  one  time  or  another,  and 
shouldn't  have  liked  them  much  unless  he  had. 
He  cared  little  for  the  people  who  had  no  faults  to 
talk  about.  But  he  enjoyed  most  a  settled,  hearty 
antipathy,  one  that  would  keep  for  a  lifetime,  and 
enlist  his  principles  in  its  behalf.  One  of  his  most 
characteristic  essays  is  entitled  On  the  Pleasures 
of  Hating;  and  it  is  written  with  gusto.  Happiness, 
as  well  as  virtue,  he  held,  consists  not  merely  in 
loving  the  good,  but  in  hating  the  evil;  and  he 
could  always  identify  the  evil  he  hated  with  some 
pet  adversary  of  his  own.  His  pleasure  was  all  the 
keener  that  he  knew  himself  always  on  the  unpopu- 
lar side,  and  could  taste  the  sweet  sense  of  being 
wronged.  And  as  there  was  no  one  his  match  in 
venomed  satire,  he  had  the  peculiarly  happy  fortune 
of  vanquishing  his  antagonist  and  losing  his  cause; 
and  thus  enjoyed  at  once  the  pride  of  victory  and  the 
pride  of  martyrdom. 

In  truth,  no  small  share  of  the  satisfaction  of  Haz- 
litt's  maturer  life  came  from  a  certain  high,  self-ap- 
proving melancholy.  He  felt  himself  one  of  the  faith- 
ful few  who  championed  a  lost  cause,  who  despair  but 
never  surrender.  He  would  fain  withdraw  from  a 

5° 


WILLIAM    HAZLITT 

world  that  misunderstood  and  slandered  him,  and 
cloister  himself  with  his  books  and  his  memories 
to  chew  the  cud  of  bitter-sweet  fancy.  II  Penseroso 
is  far  from  being  an  unhappy  man;  and  almost  all 
his  delights  were  well  known  to  William  Hazlitt. 
Such  essays  as  Reading  Old  Books,  On  Living  to 
One's  Self,  On  the  Past  and  Future,  Why  Distant 
Objects  Please,  A  Farewell  to  Essay  Writing,  are 
the  most  perfect  expression  in  modern  prose  writing 
of  Milton's  ideal,  worthy  companions  of  his  immor- 
tally familiar  verse.  The  charms  of  art  and  letters 
and  music,  the  graver  and  more  pensive  beauties  of 
the  world  about  us,  softened  in  the  mellow  light  of 
memory  —  one  sees  them  all  in  such  essays,  and 
knows  that  the  writer  could  not  have  been  altogether 
unhappy. 

And  in  such  essays  it  is  easy  to  discover  the  charm 
of  the  man's  personality.  For  Hazlitt  was  not  a 
cynic,  rather  a  sentimentalist.  His  sensibilities  were 
overstrung.  His  shyness  and  suspicion,  his  irritabil- 
ity of  temper,  really  came  of  an  eager,  timorous 
craving  for  sympathy  that  he  never  expected  to 
find.  Underneath  his  moods  there  was  a  hunger 
for  affection.  The  few  friends  who  really  under- 
stood him,  while  they  enjoyed  his  stinging  satire, 
his  subtle  paradox,  knew  that  behind  the  mask  of 
this  shy  and  moody  temper  the  man  cherished  an 
admiration  for  all  noble  things,  a  love  for  all  beauti- 

51 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

ful  things ;  they  knew  that  the  enmity  and  irritation 
that  made  him  difficult  were  often  half  affected,  to 
give  pungency  to  his  criticism,  while  his  friendships 
were  real  and  abiding.  The  tribute  of  his  best  and 
most  discriminating  friend,  Lamb,  in  an  oft-quoted 
letter  to  Southey,  is  proof  enough  of  the  essential 
manhood  of  Hazlitt:  "I  think  W.  H.  to  be,  in  his 
natural  and  healthy  state,  one  of  the  wisest  and 
finest  spirits  breathing;  so  far  from  being  ashamed 
of  that  intimacy  which  was  between  us,  it  is  my 
boast  that  I  was  able  for  so  many  years  to  have 
possessed  it  entire ;  and  I  think  I  shall  go  to  my  grave 
without  finding  or  expecting  to  find  such  a  compan- 
ion." 

Ill 

But  whatever  Hazlitt  was  as  a  man,  he  was  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  most  delightful  of  writers.  Let  me 
first  except  Sir  Walter's  novels  and  everything  of 
Lamb's,  and  then  I  insist  that  the  very  best  prose 
written  in  England  between  1800  and  1830  is  to  be 
found  in  the  pages  of  William  Hazlitt.  Nobody  is 
obliged  to  read  anybody's  Complete  Works.  Drop 
out  the  Liber  Amor  is  and  most  of  the  attempts 
at  formal  philosophical  and  political  discussion, 
and  there  will  still  remain  a  body  of  Hazlitt' s  writ- 
ing which  by  comparison  makes  De  Quincey  seem 
tumid,  Wilson  turgid,  and  Hunt  vapid.  Indeed  I 

52 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

can  understand,  though  I  cannot  quite  share,  the 
preference  Walter  Bagehot  is  said  to  have  expressed 
for  Hazlitt  over  Lamb.  As  far  as  mere  style  goes, 
I  should  hold  that  Hazlitt  had  no  equal  in  his  day. 
"He  says  things  of  his  own  in  a  way  of  his  own," 
declared  Coleridge ;  which  is  not  a  very  inadequate 
description  of  good  prose.  Perhaps  he  had  not  the 
constructive  ability  for  a  great  work,  —  though  the 
Napoleon  is  very  well  composed,  —  but  we  have 
no  better  master  of  the  short  familiar  essay.  De 
Quincey,  always  unfair  to  Hazlitt,  complained  that 
he  was  never  eloquent  because  his  thoughts  were 
"abrupt,  discontinuous,  non-sequacious."  Perhaps 
he  was  not  eloquent;  eloquence  is  usually  out  of 
place  in  such  writings  as  his,  though  there  are  many 
passages  in  these  essays  that,  if  not  eloquent,  are 
something  better.  But  Hazlitt' s  writing,  whether 
"sequacious"  or  not,  is  never  without  both  order 
and  movement.  De  Quincey  had  taken  as  his 
model  the  long-breathed,  pompous  English  of  the 
early  seventeenth  century,  and  refused  to  admire 
any  writing  that  did  not  echo  that  prolonged  sonorous 
note.  Hazlitt's  models  —  so  far  as  he  had  any  — 
were  rather  the  essayists  of  the  next  century,  Addison, 
Steele,  Swift ;  and  no  more  serviceable,  idiomatic 
English  than  theirs  was  ever  written.  He  has  their 
ease  and  urbanity,  their  love  of  the  first  person 
singular,  their  gift  to  put  themselves  en  rapport  with 

53 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

the  reader.  But  he  has,  also,  what  they  never  had, 
a  vivid  imagination  and  a  quick  sense  of  the  ro- 
mantic. He  cannot  announce  any  proposition  but 
instantly  there  comes  trooping  about  it  a  throng  of 
images  and  examples.  His  style  is,  therefore,  of 
necessity  profuse,  but  it  is  neither  diffuse  nor 
labored.  When  he  gets  into  a  glow  of  passion  or 
imagination,  he  may  go  on  piling  clause  upon  clause, 
and  sometimes  makes  a  sentence  of  portentous 
length,  but  his  structure  is  simple;  he  has  no  tricks 
of  style,  and  his  very  mannerisms  are  unconscious. 
His  language  is  choice,  but  it  is  the  speech  of  daily 
life,  without  a  trace  of  preciosity.  He  is  always 
spontaneous  and  sincere.  He  is  certainly  very 
extravagant  now  and  then,  especially  in  his  abuse, 
and  pours  upon  his  enemy  "a  nice  derangement  of 
epitaphs";  but  he  is  genuinely  angry.  For  the 
moment  he  means  all  he  says;  though  very  likely 
on  the  next  page  he  may  relent  and  salve  the  wound 
he  has  made  by  some  regretful  memory  or  confes- 
sion. No  writing  was  ever  less  bookish;  it  is 
the  voice  of  William  Hazlitt  speaking  right  on. 
Mr.  Henley  is  so  impressed  with  this  colloquial 
charm  as  to  believe  that,  excellent  as  is  Hazlitt's 
writing,  he  must  have  talked  even  better  than  he 
wrote.  But  I  doubt  that.  It  is  not  of  record  that 
he  talked  brilliantly,  save  now  and  then  when  alone 
with  Lamb  or  one  or  two  other  intimates.  Listen- 

54 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

ers  put  him  out.  I  suspect  he  always  talked  best 
with  himself,  alone  with  his  books  and  his  memories, 
in  the  Hut  at  Winterslow. 

He  has  been  criticised  for  his  habit  of  profuse 
quotation.  It  would  be  a  juster  criticism  that  he 
quotes  very  carelessly.  In  a  lecture  on  Shakespeare 
he  remarks  that  "in  trying  to  recollect  any  other 
author  we  sometimes  stumble,  in  case  of  failure,  on  a 
word  as  good ;  in  Shakespeare  any  other  word  but 
the  true  one  is  sure  to  be  wrong."  And  then,  within 
three  pages,  he  quotes  from  Hamlet  after  this  fashion : 

"There  is  a  willow  hanging  o'er  a  brook 
That  shows  its  hoary  leaves  in  the  glassy  stream," 

which  is  what  Falstaff  might  term  "damnable 
iteration."  But  the  very  freedom  of  his  quotations, 
at  all  events,  proves  them  unstudied.  They  slip 
unconsciously  into  his  lines  from  the  stores  of  his 
memory ;  and  the  stuff  of  his  own  writing  is  so  good 
as  not  to  suffer  by  contrast  with  his  frequent  borrow- 
ings. 

But  though  Hazlitt's  style  is  so  spontaneous,  it 
is  never  really  careless  or  slovenly.  His  best  work 
was  done  rapidly,  illumined  by  the  momentary 
play  of  allusion  and  the  gleam  of  fancy  best  struck 
out  when  the  mind  is  heated  and  eager.  Yet  it 
always  shows  that  instinctive  sense  of  phrase  which 
is  the  hall-mark  of  good  style;  and  it  always  has 

55 


A  GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

that  crowning  grace  of  prose,  a  good  rhythm.  All 
good  writing,  he  says  somewhere,  sounds  well  when 
read  aloud;  his  own  bears  that  test.  His  manner, 
while  familiar,  has  not  only  ease,  but  distinction. 
He  said,  with  pardonable  pride,  in  his  last  years, 
"I  have  written  no  common-place,  nor  a  line  that 
licks  the  dust."  And  frequently  in  some  mood  of 
lofty  thought  or  mournful  memory  his  effects  of  tone 
and  rhythm  are  far  more  subtle  and  moving  than  any 
of  De  Quincey's  bravura.  There  are  such  passages  in 
the  essay  On  Antiquity,  —  an  essay  that  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  would  have  loved  —  in  that  On  the  Feeling  of 
Immortality  in  Youth,  On  Novelty  and  Familiarity, 
and  in  half  a  score  of  others.  Read  a  dozen  of  his 
essays,  with  their  constant  play  of  allusion,  their  apt  — 
if  over-abundant  —  quotation ;  their  fleeting  glimpses 
of  imagination,  now  august,  now  beautiful,  now 
pathetic,  but  always  vivid;  their  brilliant,  half- 
earnest  paradox;  their  mild  tone  of  melancholy 
reflection ;  their  flashes  of  cynical  satire ;  all  flowing 
in  a  rhythm,  unstudied  yet  varied  and  musical  — 
and  then  you  understand  why  many  of  the  best 
masters  of  modern  prose  —  Macaulay,  Walter 
Bagehot,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  Augustine 
Birrell  —  have  given  to  the  style  of  Hazlitt  their 
praise  and  the  better  tribute  of  imitation.  "We  are 
fine  fellows,"  said  Stevenson  once,  in  despairing  ad- 
miration, "but  we  can't  write  like  William  Hazlitt." 

56 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

If  we  turn  to  the  matter  of  his  writing,  it  may  be 
perhaps  admitted  that,  outside  of  his  literary  criti- 
cism, he  had  not  much  to  teach  us.  If  a  man  has 
resolved  never  to  change  his  mind,  it  doesn't  much 
matter  what  he  thinks.  Hazlitt  had  practically 
left  off  thinking  at  thirty,  and  his  opinions,  there- 
fore, had  mostly  stiffened  into  prejudices  before  he 
was  fifty.  His  political  principles  had  all  resolved 
themselves  into  hatred  of  the  authority  of  kings. 
On  that  theme  he  has  numerous  variations,  and 
he  can  be  infinitely  entertaining  in  his  attacks,  angry 
or  mournful,  upon  the  enemies  of  the  truth  once 
delivered  to  William  Hazlitt  and  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte; but  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  is  very  instruc- 
tive. The  final  result  of  a  quarter-century  of  political 
struggle,  diplomatic  scheming,  and  gigantic  military 
effort,  all  over  Europe,  had  been,  so  he  thought, 
to  send  to  St.  Helena  the  one  great  foe  of  sanctified 
tyranny,  and  to  force  upon  the  world  a  solemn  assent 
to  that  blasphemous  doctrine,  the  Divine  Right  of 
Kings.  And  to  this  result  both  parties  in  England 
had  contributed  in  about  equal  measure.  The 
best  statement  of  his  attitude  toward  English  politics 
after  Waterloo  is  found  in  his  preface  to  a  volume 
of  political  essays  collected  in  1819.  The  Tories, 
of  course,  are  the  objects  of  his  bitter  hatred,  the 
inveterate  foes  of  popular  liberty,  the  leaders  in  that 
opposition  which  had  crushed  the  movements  of 

57 


A  GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

revolution  all  over  Europe,  reseated  a  Bourbon  on 
the  throne  of  France,  and  arrayed  a  million  of 
bayonets  in  defence  of  the  odious  doctrine  of  Divine 
Right.  Yet,  at  all  events,  the  Tories  were  to  be 
credited  with  consistency.  You  knew  what  they 
were  at.  The  Whigs,  on  the  contrary,  have  not 
the  courage  of  their  convictions,  or  they  have  no  con- 
victions. To  be  an  English  Whig  in  the  glorious 
days  of  1688  was  to  be  a  representative  of  the  people, 
that  People  who  had  deposed  one  King  to  make 
another,  and  could  do  it  again.  But  now,  under 
such  sophistical  teaching  as  that  of  Burke,  the 
Whigs  were  substantially  at  one  with  the  Tories 
on  the  only  questions  of  importance.  In  the  great 
European  case  of  the  People  vs.  the  Kings,  they 
were  on  the  side  of  the  Kings.  "A  modern  Whig," 
says  Hazlitt,  bitterly,  "is  the  fag  end  of  a  Tory 
...  a  Trimmer,  that  is,  a  coward  to  both  sides  of  a 
question,  who  dares  not  be  known  as  an  honest 
man,  but  is  a  sort  of  whiffling,  shuffling,  cunning, 
silly,  contemptible,  unmeaning  negation  of  the  two." 
The  two  great  Reviews  were  like  opposite  coaches, 
"that  raise  a  great  deal  of  dust  and  spatter  one 
another  with  mud,  but  both  travel  on  the  same 
road  and  arrive  at  the  same  destination."  As  to 
the  doctrinaire  radicals,  Godwin,  Bentham,  Home 
Tooke,  and  the  rest,  they  were  little  better.  They 
really  represent  not  the  people,  but  each  man  him- 

58 


WILLIAM    HAZLITT 

self  and  nobody  else.  They  have  each  his  own 
theory,  and  are  bent  on  reforming  the  world  by  pure 
reason;  overlooking  the  sentiments,  affections,  and 
prejudices  of  man,  they  cannot  combine  and  cannot 
command.  They  furnish  no  principle  of  party 
cohesion,  and  consequently  can  never  hope  to  do 
anything  against  the  well-compacted  forces  of 
legitimacy  and  tradition.  A  reformer,  in  fact,  is 
pretty  sure  to  turn  out  a  marplot.  To  the  charge 
that  in  this  condemnation  he  involved  himself, 
Hazlitt  would  probably  have  assented  readily  enough. 
He  knew  that  he  had  no  gift  for  association  or 
leadership.  In  the  opening  sentences  of  the  pref- 
ace just  quoted,  he  says,  "I  am  no  politician,  and 
still  less  can  I  be  said  to  be  a  party  man ;  but  I  have 
a  hatred  for  tyranny  and  a  contempt  for  its  tools." 
His  writing  on  political  matters  is,  unfortunately, 
mostly  limited  to  the  various  expressions  of  this 
hatred ;  and  he  never  seemed  to  have  any  just  appre- 
ciation of  the  great  force  of  liberal  sentiment  that 
was  gathering  head  in  England  for  the  twenty  years 
after  Waterloo,  to  culminate  in  the  reforms  of 
1832. 

Mr.  Saintsbury,  who  always  likes  good  round 
statement,  pronounces  Hazlitt  the  greatest  critic 
England  has  yet  produced.  This  seems  to  me  a 
little  extravagant ;  but  if  he  will  change  the  tense  of 

59 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

his  verb,  I  agree.  Hazlitt  was  the  greatest  critic 
England  had  seen  up  to  that  time.  The  truth  is, 
as  Hazlitt  himself  admirably  says,  "Coleridge  threw 
a  great  stone  into  the  standing  pool  of  English 
criticism  which  spattered  some  people  with  mud, 
but  which  gave  a  motion  to  the  surface  which  has  not 
since  subsided."  Coleridge's  own  work,  of  course, 
was  mostly  inchoate  or  fragmentary;  but  he  certainly 
did  give  a  new  character  and  direction  to  criticism; 
and  Hazlitt  was  first  of  the  many  critics  to  feel  his 
influence.  His  criticism  is  to  be  found  not  only  in 
his  lectures  on  English  writers,  but  scattered  through 
all  his  miscellaneous  writing,  some  of  the  best  of  it 
in  passing  comment  or  illustration.  It  is  never 
formal  or  systematic.  He  repudiates  over  and 
over  again  the  academic  criticism  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  which  judged  a  work  of  the  imagination  by 
the  measuring-rod  of  Aristotle,  often  without  giving 
us  any  idea  of  its  power  and  charm.  Montaigne 
—  of  whom  he  gives  an  admirable  estimate  in  a 
single  page  —  he  avers  to  be  the  true  critic,  "who 
didn't  compare  books  with  rule  and  system  or  fall 
out  with  a  book  that  is  good  for  anything  because  all 
the  angles  on  the  corners  are  not  right  angles," 
but  rather  tells  us  what  he  himself  likes  in  it.  This 
is  always  Hazlitt's  method.  He  is  the  first  of  Eng- 
lish impressionist  critics,  and  he  is  still  one  of  the 
very  best.  Though  his  manner  may  seem  sketchy  or 

60 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

discursive,  he  succeeds  in  saying  the  few  essential 
things  about  his  author.  He  goes  to  the  root  of  the 
matter.  His  brief  comments,  for  example,  on 
Addison,  Steele,  or  Swift  are  better  as  appreciations 
than  half  an  acre  of  academic  platitude.  There  is 
a  personal  quality  in  his  criticism.  He  writes  with 
gusto.  A  book  to  him  is  not  a  mere  academic 
exercise,  a  "piece  of  literature";  it  is  a  piece  of 
life,  the  voice  of  a  man  or  a  woman  with  whom  it 
is  worth  while  to  be  acquainted.  Criticism  thus 
becomes  intimate,  familiar.  You  may  very  often 
discover  the  essential  character  of  a  book  as  of  a 
man,  by  some  incidental  question,  some  shrewd 
practical  comparison  of  views.  You  want  to  find 
out,  not  how  your  book  conforms  to  certain  rules; 
you  want  to  find  out  what  it  is  good  for.  Now 
Hazlitt  has  in  a  remarkable  degree  the  gift  to  enjoy 
for  himself  what  is  best  in  literature,  and  the  gift  to 
convey  that  enjoyment  to  his  reader  —  which  I  take 
it  is  the  chief  function  of  criticism. 

To  be  sure,  criticism  of  this  sort  has  its  limitations. 
It  is  likely  to  be  confined  to  the  range  of  the  critic's 
favorite  reading.  Fortunately,  however,  Hazlitt's 
taste  was  sound,  and  it  was  catholic.  He  seldom 
made  the  mistake  of  liking  the  second  best  better 
than  he  liked  the  best.  I  do  not  think  his  reading 
was  exhaustive  in  any  period  of  our  literature.  He 
cared  little  for  the  little  men.  In  his  lectures  on 

61 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

English  poetry  he  slips  hastily  over  the  minor  seven- 
teenth-century men,  owning  that  with  some  of  them  — 
Donne,  for  example  —  he  has  no  acquaintance.  He 
sometimes  took  the  dangerous  risk  of  judging  an 
author  by  a  small  sample.  Thus  all  the  biographies 
record  that  he  once  lectured  on  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  and  was  afterwards  foolish  enough  to  let 
out  that  he  had  only  read  about  a  quarter  of  their 
work;  but  it  was  probably  the  best  quarter,  for  the 
lecture  is  a  very  good  one.  But  what  I  here  insist 
on  is  that  he  had  a  thoroughly  sympathetic  appre- 
ciation of  the  best  work  of  widely  different  periods. 
He  was  in  hearty  accord  with  the  new  romantic 
liking  for  Shakespeare  and  the  Elizabethan  drama; 
but  at  the  same  time  he  protested  earnestly  against 
the  blindness  of  those  critics  who,  like  De  Quincey, 
could  see  nothing  worthy  to  be  called  poetry  in  Pope. 
In  fact,  the  best  criticism  of  Shakespeare,  save  only 
that  of  Coleridge,  written  in  that  generation,  and  the 
best  estimate  of  Pope,  so  far  as  I  know,  in  any  genera- 
tion, are  both  to  be  found  in  the  lectures  of  Hazlitt. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  name  any  critic  who  has 
shown  sufficient  breadth  of  appreciation  to  estimate 
with  equal  justice  such  widely  different  poets  as 
Shakespeare,  Pope,  Burns,  Wordsworth,  and  Byron. 
It  is  a  more  serious  objection  to  the  impressionist 
critic  that  he  has  no  historical  perspective.  Hazlitt, 
it  may  be  admitted,  seldom  makes  any  attempt  to 

62 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

set  an  author  in  his  proper  surroundings  or  to  show 
how  the  essential  qualities  of  the  literature  of  a  period 
are  decided,  or  at  all  events  largely  influenced,  by 
political  and  social  conditions.  He  was  interested 
in  the  absolute  value  of  a  book,  not  in  the  forces  of 
circumstance  and  environment  that  may  have  pro- 
duced it.  Nor  could  we  expect  him  to  be.  The 
historical  type  of  criticism  is  of  recent  growth;  and 
its  value  is  perhaps  overestimated  in  these  days  when 
we  tend  to  explain  everything  by  the  principle  of 
evolution.  For,  after  all,  every  great  work  of  liter- 
ature is  differentiated  from  every  other  as  the  expres- 
sion of  a  unique  personality  that  cannot  be  prer 
dieted  or  explained. 

But  though  Hazlitt's  critical  writing  is  made  up  for 
the  most  part  of  his  personal  judgments,  it  should 
not  be  thought  that  these  judgments  are  purely 
empirical  or  unreasoned.  Quite  the  contrary.  He 
knew  not  only  what  he  liked,  but  why  he  liked  it. 
His  mind  was  prone  to  speculation,  and  while  he 
makes  no  parade  of  critical  principles,  there  are 
frequent  passages  of  reflection  in  all  his  work 
which  unite  philosophic  acumen  with  literary 
sensibility.  The  lecture  on  Descriptive  Poetry, 
for  example,  contains  an  acute  analysis  of  the 
charm  of  nature,  especially  as  used  in  literature. 
A  collection  of  such  passages  and  sentences, 
culled  from  his  writing,  would  form  a  very  con- 

63 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

siderable  body  of  critical  dicta.  His  one  attempt 
at  more  systematic  examination  of  an  abstract 
literary  theme,  the  lecture  on  The  Nature  of  Poetry, 
is,  in  my  judgment,  one  of  the  very  best  contribu- 
tions to  that  world-old  discussion. 

Perhaps  the  surest  proof  of  a  critic's  ability  is  to 
be  found  in  his  verdicts  upon  his  contemporaries. 
So  long  as  he  attempts  little  more  than  to  explain 
and  justify  the  decisions  of  posterity,  he  runs  little 
risk  of  serious  error;  but  it  is  quite  another  thing 
to  discover  genius  yet  unheralded,  to  withstand 
obstinate  prejudice,  or  to  refuse  adulation  to  the 
reigning  popular  idol.  Hazlitt  stands  this  test  well. 
In  only  one  instance  is  there  any  pronounced  dissent 
to-day  from  his  judgments  upon  his  contemporaries.1 
The  Edinburgh  Review  article  on  Shelley  (July, 
1824)  will  always  be  resented  by  Shelleyans;  we 
may  all  admit  that  it  is  deficient  in  sympathy.  Yet 
something  may  be  said  for  Hazlitt.  Shelley,  the 
man,  his  opinions,  his  philosophy  of  life,  he  esti- 
mated very  justly.  No  one  has  better  expressed  the 
visionary  quality  of  Shelley's  thought,  combined  with 

1 1  assume  that  the  review  of  Coleridge's  Christabel  in  the 
Edinburgh  Review,  September,  1816,  was  not  written  by  Hazlitt. 
I  am  not  unaware  that  the  authorship  of  the  paper  is  still  in  dis- 
pute ;  but  for  myself  I  can  find  in  it  no  trace  of  Hazlitt's  manner. 
He  could  be  caustic  enough  on  the  character  and  opinions  of 
Coleridge ;  but  such  stupid  comment  as  this  on  Coleridge's  poetry  he 
never  wrote.  The  article  in  my  opinion  is  aut  Jeffrey  aut  diabolus. 

64 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

high  sincerity  of  purpose  and  a  certain  lonely  obsti- 
nacy of  will.  But  the  poetry  of  such  a  nature  Hazlitt 
could  not  highly  prize.  It  seemed  to  him  deficient  in 
genuine  human  interest.  Hazlitt  always  liked  to  keep 
his  feet  on  the  ground ;  and  this  verse  was  pure  vision, 
a  beautiful  mist  arising  from  social  and  political  doc- 
trines essentially  untrue.  We  shall  remember  that 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  held  a  not  dissimilar  opinion. 
It  is  certainly  to  be  said  in  praise  of  Hazlitt's 
contemporary  criticism  that  it  was  proof  against 
his  party  spleen.  He  kept  his  prejudices  out  of  his 
verdicts  most  remarkably.  In  those  days,  when  to  be 
a  Liberal  was  to  be  damned  without  mercy  by  the 
Quarterly  and  by  Blackwood,  he  was  always  ready 
to  own  that  good  might  come  even  out  of  a  quar- 
terly reviewer.  We  have  seen  how  he  united  the  most 
inflammatory  hatred  of  Burke  with  enthusiastic 
admiration  for  Burke's  writing.  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
the  hide-bound  Tory  aristocrat,  the  servile  wor- 
shipper of  kings,  he  abuses  through  a  portentous 
sentence  two  pages  long  into  which  he  has  gathered 
pretty  nearly  all  the  vocabulary  of  opprobrium; 
and  in  the  same  essay  he  fairly  goes  into  rapture  over 
the  Waverley  Novels  —  the  worst  of  them,  he  says,  is 
better  than  any  other  person's  best,  and  all  together 
they  are  a  new  edition  of  human  nature.  Words- 
worth, the  solid,  conservative  stamp-distributor,  who 
sat  in  the  Lake  District  solemnly  admiring  his  own 

65 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

moral  being,  was  the  butt  of  some  of  his  keenest 
satire;  but  the  very  best  and  most  discriminating 
criticism  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  between  1815  and 
1825  was  written  by  Hazlitt;  indeed,  I  hardly  know 
of  any  better  since.  Even  Southey,  the  renegade 
laureate  of  George  the  Fourth,  with  his  absurd 
Kehamas  and  Visions  of  Judgment,  Hazlitt  praises 
generously  —  though  perhaps  always  with  a  tinge 
of  irony  —  as  one  of  the  best  of  prose-writers  and 
admirable  of  men,  as  virtuous  as  though  there  were 
no  cakes  and  ale.  It  was  Lamb  who  said  (and  all 
critics  after  him)  that  Hazlitt  was  more  just  in  his 
praise  than  in  his  blame;  the  truth  seems  to  be  that 
he  was  just  to  literary  excellence  wherever  he  found 
it.  It  was  only  the  dull  pretenders  like  Gifford, 
whose  politics  and  literature  were  alike  intolerable, 
that  provoked  his  unmixed  hatred. 

But  the  most  interesting,  and  I  think  the  most 
valuable,  part  of  Hazlitt's  work  is  to  be  found,  not  in 
his  criticism,  but  in  the  miscellaneous  essays  in 
the  Table  Talk,  the  Winterslow  Essays,  the  Round 
Table,  the  Plain  Speaker.  These  essays  are  so 
varied  in  subject  that  it  is  not  easy  to  describe  them, 
but  they  all  have  this  in  common:  they  are  sub- 
jective and  autobiographical.  Hazlitt  is  drawing 
directly  upon  his  own  experience.  In  this,  by  the 
way,  he  is  doing  just  what  his  contemporaries  were 

66 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

doing.  That  was  the  period  of  egotism  in  English 
literature.  Not  only  the  prose  men,  —  Hazlitt, 
De  Quincey,  Lamb,  —  but  even  more  noticeably  the 
great  poets,  —  Wordsworth,  reverently  detailing 
through  eight  thousand  lines  the  growth  of  his  mind  ; 
Byron,  bearing  over  Europe  the  pageant  of  his  bleed- 
ing heart ;  Shelley,  panting  with  alternate  aspiration 
and  despair, — every  one  of  them  "looked  in  his  heart 
and  wrote."  Scott  alone  had  some  dramatic  gift 
and  could  find  his  themes  outside  himself.  The 
value  of  such  self-revelation  depended,  obviously, 
upon  the  self  revealed.  In  the  personality  of  Hazlitt 
there  is  certainly  no  lack  of  interest.  We  see  in  his 
essays  an  intellect  disciplined  and  broadened  by 
long  thought,  enriched  by  the  best  reading  and  by 
early  and  intimate  acquaintance  with  two  or  three 
of  the  ablest  men  of  that  generation;  a  vivid  imagina- 
tion and  a  quick  eye  for  beauty;  a  temper  flashing 
into  anger  at  opposition  or  softened  to  melancholy 
by  failure,  yet  constant  to  the  ideals  of  youth;  a 
vein  of  perversity  which  always  liked  the  back  side  of 
a  truth  and  the  under  side  of  a  quarrel;  and  a  gift 
of  phrase  ranging  from  caustic  epigram  to  lofty 
eloquence.  And  in  his  egotism  there  is  no  Byronic 
posing  nor  any  braggart  quality;  it  is  frank,  naive, 
almost  unconscious. 

Some  of  these  miscellaneous  essays  are  on  philo- 
sophic themes ;  as,  Why  Distant  Objects  Please,  On 

67 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Personal  Identity,  On  the  Past  and  Future,  On  the 
Feeling  of  Immortality  in  Youth.  Yet  they  are  as 
genuinely  autobiographical  as  the  others.  There 
is  keen  penetration,  subtle  analysis  in  plenty,  but 
mixed  with  Hazlitt's  sardonic  humor,  colored  by 
his  personal  feelings,  illustrated  from  his  own 
experience.  He  was  always  fond  of  speculation 
upon  the  laws  of  conduct.  He  said  that  he  had  left 
off  reading  at  an  early  age ;  but  he  had  been  watching 
the  human  comedy  intently  all  his  days,  and  his 
power  of  psychological  analysis  was  very  acute. 
He  likes  to  expose  the  unfamiliar  side  of  some 
familiar  truth,  to  break  up  our  self-satisfied  common- 
place, to  explode  a  paradox  under  some  smug  pro- 
priety. He  has  in  memory  rich  stores  of  example, 
and  he  constantly  enlivens  an  abstract  discussion 
with  some  shrewd  bit  of  observation  or  bright 
gleam  of  fancy.  In  this  subtle,  imaginative,  half- 
cynical  philosophy  of  everyday  life  no  other  Eng- 
lish essayist  is  so  great  a  master.  His  pages  sparkle 
with  truths  of  character  and  conduct  cast  into  striking 
aphorisms  or  epigrams,  often  with  an  edge  of  satire. 

"We  enjoy  a  friend's  society  only  in  proportion 
as  he  is  satisfied  with  ours." 

"To  look  down  upon  anything  seemingly  implies 
a  greater  elevation  and  enlargement  of  view  than 
to  look  up  to  it." 

68 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

"An  excess  of  modesty  is,  in  effect,  an  excess  of 
pride." 

"  Fashion  is  gentility  running  away  from  vulgarity 
and  afraid  of  being  overtaken  by  it." 

"A  woman's  attachment  to  her  husband  is  not  to 
be  suspected  if  she  will  allow  no  one  to  abuse  him  but 
herself." 

"  There  appears  to  be  no  natural  necessity  for  evil,  but 
that  there  is  a  perfect  indifference  to  good  without  it.7 

"  We  never  do  anything  well  until  we  cease  to  think 
about  the  manner  of  doing  it." 

"An  Englishman  is  sure  to  speak  his  mind  more 
plainly  than  others  —  yes,  if  it  will  give  you  more 
pain  to  hear  it." 

Such  pithy  statements  were  not  carefully  studied 
for  rhetorical  effect.  Hazlitt  was  never  ambitious  of 
mere  smartness.  But  he  did  like  to  put  the  extreme 
case,  to  show  some  fact  of  human  nature  in  unfamiliar 
and  unexpected  relations.  He  confesses  a  tendency 
to  "chase  my  ideas  into  paradox  or  mysticism."  For 
a  paradox  is  not  a  falsehood  which  seems  true,  but 
a  truth  that  seems  false;  and  in  that  guise  it  often 
gains  admission  where  truth  in  homespun  common- 
place would  be  ignored  or  turned  away. 

But  the  most  striking  and  characteristic  passages 
in  these  philosophical  essays  are  those  in  which 
Hazlitt  —  to  use  his  phrase  again  —  chases  his 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

idea,  not  into  paradox,  but  into  mysticism.  He  was 
always  haunted  by  some  sense  of  the  mystery  that 
touches  our  practical  life  at  every  point,  the  unfathom- 
able depth  of  meaning  in  our  common  speech.  At 
the  suggestion  of  a  simple  incident  or  familiar  word, 
he  may  pass  into  a  mood  of  solemn  wonder  and  imag- 
ining. Thus,  for  example,  the  problem  of  the  essen- 
tial nature  of  Time,  the  little  instant  marked  off  for 
each  of  us  as  by  the  bounds  of  Birth  and  Death  from 
the  Eternities,  had  always  a  strange  fascination  for 
him.  "  That  things  should  be  that  are  now  no  more, 
creates  in  my  mind,"  he  says,  "the  most  profound 
astonishment.  I  cannot  solve  the  mystery  of  the 
past,  nor  exhaust  my  pleasure  in  it."  In  his  moods 
of  reflection  upon  this  world-old  mystery,  though  he 
never  preached,  his  writing  takes  on  a  solemn  yet 
impassioned  dignity  of  movement  and  imagery  that 
sets  it  beside  our  very  noblest  prose.  Such  a  sen- 
tence as  this,  with  its  heaped-up  statement  of  all  the 
possibilities  of  life  suddenly  smitten  across  by  the 
stroke  of  annihilation,  reminds  us  of  Jeremy  Taylor. 

"To  see  the  golden  sun,  the  azure  sky,  the  out- 
stretched ocean;  to  walk  upon  the  green  earth  and 
be  lord  of  a  thousand  creatures ;  to  look  down  yawn- 
ing precipices  or  over  distant  sunny  vales ;  to  see  the 
world  spread  out  under  one's  feet  as  a  map ;  to  bring 
the  stars  near ;  to  view  the  smallest  insects  through  a 

70 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

microscope;  to  read  history,  and  consider  the  revo- 
lutions of  empire  and  the  successions  of  generations ; 
to  hear  of  the  glory  of  Tyre,  of  Sidon,  of  Babylon, 
of  Susa,  and  to  say  all  these  were  before  me,  and  are 
now  nothing ;  to  say  I  exist  in  such  a  point  of  time, 
and  in  such  a  point  of  space ;  to  be  a  spectator  and  a 
part  of  its  ever  moving  scene ;  to  witness  the  change 
of  season,  of  spring  and  autumn,  of  winter  and  sum- 
mer ;  to  feel  hot  and  cold,  pleasure  and  pain,  beauty 
and  deformity,  right  and  wrong;  to  be  sensible  to 
the  accidents  of  nature;  to  consider  the  mighty 
world  of  eye  and  ear;  to  listen  to  the  stock-dove's 
notes  amid  the  forest  deep ;  to  journey  over  moor  and 
mountain;  to  hear  the  midnight  sainted  choir;  to 
visit  lighted  halls,  or  the  cathedral's  gloom,  or  sit  in 
crowded  theatres  and  see  life  itself  mocked ;  to  study 
the  works  of  art,  and  refine  the  sense  of  beauty  to 
agony ;  to  worship  fame,  and  dream  of  immortality ; 
to  look  upon  the  Vatican,  and  to  read  Shakespeare ; 
to  gather  up  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients,  and  to  pry 
into  the  future;  to  listen  to  the  trump  of  war,  the 
shout  of  victory ;  to  question  history  as  to  the  move- 
ments of  the  human  heart;  to  seek  for  truth;  to 
plead  the  cause  of  humanity ;  to  overlook  the  world 
as  if  time  and  nature  poured  their  treasures  at  our 
feet,  —  to  be  and  to  do  all  this,  and  then  in  a  moment 
to  be  nothing  —  to  have  it  all  snatched  from  us  as  by 
a  juggler's  trick  or  a  phantasmagoria!" 


A   GROUP   OF    ENGLISH    ESSAYISTS 

The  most  entertaining  of  all  the  essays,  however, 
and  probably  the  most  familiar,  are  in  a  still  more 
intimate,  personal  manner.  Sometimes  they  are 
made  up  entirely  of  reminiscence,  like  the  familiar 
essay  on  My  First  Acquaintance  with  Poets, 
quoted  at  the  beginning  of  this  paper,  or  that  well- 
known  account  of  the  evening  in  Lamb's  chambers, 
On  People  One  would  Wish  to  have  Seen.  But 
more  frequently  Hazlitt  takes  a  topic  that  starts  some 
train  of  reflection  or  gratifies  some  pet  animosity, 
and  talks  a  half-hour,  On  Reading  Old  Books,  On  the 
Look  of  a  Gentleman,  On  Disagreeable  People,  On 
the  Pleasures  of  Hating,  or  on  Painting.  You  do  not 
go  to  such  writing  as  this  for  instruction  or  for  in- 
spiration ;  but  instruction  is  usually  a  bore,  and  what 
professes  to  be  inspiration  is  often  only  irritation. 
Yet  Hazlitt's  papers  are  never  made  up  of  languid 
revery  or  idle  gossip.  He  is  always  giving  some  sud- 
den fillip  to  your  thinking.  This  writing  is  a  revela- 
tion of  an  active,  nervous  mind.  The  familiar 
relations  of  society,  the  old  anxieties,  affections, 
hopes,  and  disappointments  of  common  life,  he  sets  in 
picturesque  circumstance,  and  invests  them  all  with 
his  own  emotion.  These  essays  are  his  criticism  of 
life.  And  not  by  any  means  an  altogether  unwhole- 
some criticism  of  life,  I  should  say.  Doubtless  his 
predominant  moods  are  not  buoyant  or  optimistic. 
He  enjoys  poor  health,  and  is  a  little  over-severe  on 

72 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

the  red,  rotund,  thick-skinned,  average  British  man. 
He  was  a  little  too  much  inclined  to  make  a  virtue 
of  his  own  aversions,  and  to  mistake  his  own  suspi- 
cion and  ill-nature  for  stern  fidelity  to  principle. 
"No  good-natured  man,"  he  says,  "was  ever  martyr 
to  a  cause" — like  himself.  But  he  is  always  pi- 
quant, original,  and  commands  our  interest  for  his 
opinions,  if  not  our  assent.  The  whims  and  petty 
perversities  that  doubtless  made  him  difficult  as  a 
friend  make  him  delightful  as  a  writer.  For  he  was 
no  real  cynic  or  misanthrope.  He  kept  his  ideals 
noble  and  sound.  To  be  sure,  he  had  sometimes 
idealized  the  wrong  persons  —  Sarah  Walker  and 
Napoleon  Bonaparte,  for  example;  and  the  result 
was  unfortunate  for  his  temper  when  he  discovered 
his  error,  and  unfortunate  for  his  reputation  when  he 
did  not.  But  his  thoughts  and  memory  dwelt  habit- 
ually upon  things  honest  and  lovely,  and  of  good 
report.  He  never  jeers  at  virtue,  and  he  has  no  cynic 
scorn  for  his  early  dreams.  On  the  contrary,  all  the 
best  of  these  papers  have  a  backward  glance  of  fond 
reminiscence.  His  favorite  phrase  is  "I  remember." 
He  might  have  said  with  Wordsworth, 

"The  thought  of  our  past  years  in  me  doth  breed 
Perpetual  benediction." 

But  with  a  difference.  For,  out  of  all  his  memories, 
Hazlitt,  like  Jacques  (of  whom  I  have  often  thought 

73 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

he  must  have  been  a  reincarnation),  can  suck  melan- 
choly as  a  weasel  sucks  eggs.  It  is  not  the  mourn- 
ful melancholy  of  a  sated  voluptuary,  or  the  sour 
melancholy  of  a  selfish  cynic ;  it  is  the  gentle  regret 
for  the  early  days  of  books  and  friends  and  hopes. 
He  himself  evidently  takes  a  serene  satisfaction  in 
it;  and  it  softens  all  his  angry  or  querulous  moods 
into  the  twilight  tones  of  recollection.  You  shall  not 
read  far  without  coming  upon  some  passage  of  genu- 
inely poetic  vision  and  feeling  —  glimpses  of  that 
kind  of  retreat  he  loved  best,  not  rugged  or  remote, 
but  in  some  softer  solitude,  as  at  Winterslow,  hallowed 
by  old  associations,  and  in  sound  of  village  bells ; 
memories  of  scenes  he  knew,  or  friends  he  loved,  or 
books  he  read.  He  hears  the  sound  of  the  curfew 
he  heard  when  a  boy 

"Swinging  slow  with  sullen  roar," 

and  the  generations  that  are  gone,  the  tangled  forest 
glades  and  hamlets  brown  of  his  native  country,  the 
woodman's  art,  the  Norman  warrior  armed  for  battle, 
the  conqueror's  iron  rule,  and  the  peasant's  lamp  ex- 
tinguished, all  start  into  memory  at  that  clamorous 
peal.  He  recalls  the  time,  when,  in  the  inn  at  Tewks- 
bury,  he  sat  up  the  livelong  night  to  read  Paul  and 
Virginia;  the  place  where  he  first  read  Mrs.  Inch- 
bald's  Simple  Story,  "  while  an  old  crazy  hand-organ 
outside  was  playing  Robin  Adair,  and  a  summer 

74 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

shower  dropped  manna  on  my  head";  or  that  hour 
when  first  the  great  Mrs.  Siddons  passed  before  his 
sight  and  shook  his  soul  to  tears.  In  such  passages 
his  writing  has  all  the  charms  of  poetry  save  only 
the  accomplishment  of  verse. 

It  would  be  idle  to  claim  for  Hazlitt  a  place  among 
those  writers  who  have  greatly  added  to  the  knowl- 
edge, or  influenced  the  thought,  of  their  time.  His 
work  is  not,  like  that  of  Carlyle  or  Ruskin  or  even  of 
Arnold,  so  dominated  by  urgent  moral  purpose  as  to 
make  it  an  efficient  spiritual  force.  Nor  can  it  be 
said  that  in  the  whole  body  of  his  writing  there  is  any 
one  thing  that  for  weight  of  thought  or  perfection  of 
structure  can  take  highest  rank  as  literature.  But 
it  is  safe  to  say  that,  as  a  master  of  style  and  as  a 
critic  of  literature,  he  had  no  superior  in  his  own  day, 
and  has  had  very  few  since.  And  his  miscellaneous 
writings  will  have  a  perennial  charm  as  a  storehouse 
of  the  fancies,  the  humors,  the  poetry  and  wisdom, 
the  opinions  and  prejudices,  the  friendships  and  en- 
mities of  the  man  William  Hazlitt.  Every  page  is 
the  utterance  of  his  unique  personality.  He  may 
have  been  "gey  ill  to  live  with";  but  few  men  have 
known  how  to  write  more  companionable  books. 
Readers  who  ask  first  of  all  that  a  book  shall  have  a 
live  man  in  it  will  keep  his  volumes  always  within 
easy  reach,  on  the  same  shelf  with  Elia  and  Boswell. 

75 


CHARLES  LAMB 


IT  seems  idle  to  sit  down  to  write  an  essay  on 
Charles  Lamb.  As  Hazlitt  remarks  somewhere, 
"There  is  nothing  to  be  said  respecting  an  author 
that  all  the  world  have  made  up  their  minds  about." 
It  is  perhaps,  also,  a  little  dangerous,  as  well  as  idle ; 
the  average  reader  is  likely  to  resent  the  assumption 
that  any  one  is  better  acquainted  with  Elia  than  he  is. 
For  Charles  Lamb  belongs  to  the  small  group  of 
authors  for  whom  we  cherish  a  kindly  feeling  that 
precludes  any  cool,  critical  estimate.  They  may  be 
great  writers,  or  they  may  not ;  they  are  good  fellows. 
There  are  not  many  such.  Cicero's  famous  praise 
of  books  that  invigorate  our  youth  and  delight  our 
age,  delectant  domi,  non  impediunt  foris,  pernoctant 
nobiscum,  peregrinantur,  rusticantur,  is  by  no  means 
true  of  all  good  literature.  Who  takes  up  the 
Paradise  Lost  to  read  in  that  half-hour  before  he 
blows  out  his  bedside  candle,  or  tucks  the  Decline 
and  Fall  into  his  valise  as  he  is  starting  upon  a 
journey?  These  great  men  are  not  for  all  hours. 
But  old  Howell,  and  Izaak  Walton,  and  Dick  Steele, 

76 


CHARLES   LAMB 

and  Oliver  Goldsmith,  and  Sam  Johnson  in  Boswell, 
these  are  of  that  company  of  friends  to  whom  we 
need  no  critic's  introduction.  And  of  this  company 
probably  most  readers  would  pronounce  Charles 
Lamb  most  familiar  and  most  dear. 

We  may  be  sure,  indeed,  that  there  must  have  been 
some  unusual  power  in  any  personality  that  can  thus 
transmit  its  charm  through  the  generations ;  but  we 
do  not  care  to  apply  to  his  work  the  methods  of 
critical  analysis.  Moreover,  the  critic,  especially 
if  he  be  a  student  of  literary  evolution,  with  an  itch 
for  explaining  things,  is  likely  to  find  himself  put 
about  by  Lamb.  Because  Lamb  is  not  to  be  ac- 
counted for.  He  doesn't  fit  into  any  theory.  He 
doesn't  illustrate  anything.  In  describing  the  course 
of  literary  tendencies  you  don't  quite  know  where  to 
put  him.  He  might  as  well  have  lived  in  the  early 
part  of  the  seventeenth  century  as  in  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth;  in  fact,  after  five  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  he  usually  did  live  in  the  early  part  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  He  was  fourteen  years  old 
when  the  French  Revolution  broke  out,  and  the  tumult 
of  that  movement,  with  its  long  reverberations  in 
every  department  of  thought,  filled  England  all  his 
days ;  but  you  may  read  his  books  and  letters  without 
guessing  that  there  ever  was  a  revolution  in  France  — 
or  anywhere  else.  Some  of  the  intimates  of  his  man- 
hood were  very  rigid  conservatives,  like  Wordsworth 

77 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

and  Southey ;  one  or  two  were  admirers  of  Napoleon, 
like  Hazlitt;  some  were  extreme  doctrinaire  revo- 
lutionists, like  Godwin;  but  he  neither  contested 
their  opinions  nor  adopted  them.  In  himself  the 
elements  were  so  mixed  as  to  make  a  personality 
quite  unique,  not  to  be  classified,  and  not  to  be 
mapped  neatly  out  in  an  essay. 

Doubtless  Lamb  lives  in  our  imagination  chiefly 
as  a  humorist.  Everybody  knows  a  score  of  good 
stories  of  him,  of  his  whimsicalities  of  speech  and 
manner,  his  droll  jests,  his  execrable  —  and  irre- 
sistible —  puns.  We  picture  him  clad  in  black,  like 
some  nervous  parson,  slipping  down  Fleet  Street  of  a 
morning,  on  fragile  legs,  —  those  "immaterial  legs," 
as  Tom  Hood  called  them,  —  to  his  day's  work  at  the 
desk  in  the  India  House.  Getting  there  a  little  late, 
very  likely;  but,  as  he  said,  "I  m-make  up  for  that 
b-by  going  away  early."  Or  it  is  on  one  of  those 
Wednesday  evenings  in  the  little  room  up  three  flights 
in  the  Temple  buildings,  when  the  cold  ham  and  ale 
are  on  the  table,  and  the  door  opens  to  let  in  Hazlitt, 
and  Godwin,  and  Procter,  and  Burney,  and  Rickman, 
and  Ayrton;  and  perhaps,  on  some  rare  and  famed 
occasion,  the  heavy  form  of  Coleridge  himself  comes 
toiling  uncertainly  up  the  stair,  and  his  great 
forehead,  like  the  dome  of  Paul's  in  the  babble  of 
London,  throws  a  high  dignity  over  the  company. 
Or,  perhaps,  one  likes  best  of  all  to  think  of  him  in 

78 


CHARLES   LAMB 

one  of  those  long  evenings  at  home  with  Mary,  the 
sister,  at  one  side  of  the  table  writing  (it  may 
be  one  of  her  Tales  from  Shakespeare),  and  the 
brother  opposite  in  a  halo  of  smoke  —  he  is  certainly 
going  to  leave  off  tobacco  next  week  —  reading  in 
some  tall  folio  first  edition  he  has  just  brought  home 
in  triumph,  with  the  feeling  of  recklessness  that 
follows  an  extravagant  purchase.  But  wherever  he 
may  be,  there  is,  if  not  always  mirth,  always  humor, 
and  a  good  humor.  His  laughter  was  not  like  the 
crackling  of  thorns  under  a  pot,  but  genial,  kindly, 
wise.  He  knew  how  by  a  jest,  a  waggish  remark, 
half  drollery  and  half  sympathy,  to  break  up  the  crust 
of  commonplace  that  gathers  over  our  thought,  to 
enliven  the  lead-colored  monotony  that  makes  life  toil- 
some and  —  what  is  worse  —  prosaic.  And  the  abil- 
ity to  do  this  surely  is  one  of  the  best  gifts  of  genius. 
Yet,  after  all,  it  is  not,  I  think,  his  humor  that 
shows  most  strikingly  in  Lamb's  life,  but  what,  for 
want  of  a  more  precise  name,  I  should  call  heroism  — 
an  undemonstrative,  silent,  and  supremely  difficult 
virtue.  In  truth,  he  knows  but  little  of  Lamb  who 
cannot  discern  at  the  core  of  his  character  steadfast 
resolution,  patient  endurance.  His  whole  life  was  a 
discipline  of  self-denial  and  renunciation.  From 
boyhood  he  was  a  scholar,  with  a  love  for  the  tradi- 
tions of  learning  and  the  charm  of  letters.  At 
Christ's  Hospital  he  instinctively  selected  as  his  closest 

79 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

friend  that  one  bluecoat  boy  who  carried  better  brains 
than  any  other  lad  of  his  years  in  England.  Yet 
when  he  left  school,  in  1792,  Lamb  could  not  follow 
this  friend  Coleridge  to  the  University,  but,  at  the  age 
of  sixteen,  must  begin  his  lifelong  slavery  to  "the 
desk's  dull  wood."  It  may  have  been  fortunate  for 
us  that  he  was  thus  "  defrauded  of  the  sweet  food  of 
academic  institution,"  and  forced  to  that  harder 
and  more  varied  experience  out  of  which  came  the 
subtle,  half-pathetic  humor  of  Elia;  but  any  one  who 
has  read  the  delightful  paper  Oxford  in  Vacation 
knows  how  keenly  Lamb  felt  the  loss  all  his  days. 

Then,  in  September,  1796,  came  the  solemn  trag- 
edy of  his  life  —  that  black  day  when  there  fell  upon 
his  sister  Mary  the  first  of  those  visitations  to  recur 
so  often  through  all  her  after  years,  and  in  sudden 
frenzy  she  took  the  life  of  her  mother.  Lamb  gave 
up  at  once  all  other  plans  and  hopes  and  loves  to 
provide  for  his  sister.  Nothing  could  be  nobler 
than  the  quiet,  self-forgetful  temper  in  which  he 
accepted  that  lifelong  charge,  excusing  the  selfish 
indifference  of  his  elder  brother  who  should  have 
shared  it,  and  esteeming  his  exclusive  care  of  Mary 
not  a  burden,  but  a  privilege.  He  knew  that  this 
duty  must  set  him  apart  in  many  ways  from  his 
old  friends  and  associations.  That  poem,  the  Old 
Familiar  Faces,  surely  one  of  the  most  pathetic 
in  our  literature,  was  not  written  near  the  close  of 

80 


CHARLES   LAMB 

his  life,  but  near  its  beginning,  when  he  was  but 
twenty-three  years  old;  and  recounts  the  sense  of 
loneliness  and  isolation  with  which  he  fronted  the 
coming  years :  — 

"I  have  had  playmates,  I  have  had  companions, 
In  the  days  of  childhood,  in  my  joyful  schooldays, 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 


"Friend  of  my  bosom,  thou  more  than  a  brother, 
Why  wert  thou  not  born  in  my  father's  dwelling? 
So  might  we  talk  of  the  old  familiar  faces  — 

"How  some  they  have  died,  and  some  they  have  left  me, 
And  some  are  taken  from  me ;  all  are  departed ; 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces." 

We  can  never  know  how  much  that  tender  and  watch- 
ful devotion  to  his  sister,  through  thirty-six  years, 
cost  Charles  Lamb.  He  lived  in  constant  anxiety 
for  her,  fearful  now  of  too  much  excitement  and  now 
of  too  much  monotony,  and  always  dreading  the 
oft-recurring  summons  for  their  separation.  "  Don't 
say  anything,  when  you  write,  about  our  low  spirits/' 
writes  Mary  to  Sarah  Stoddard;  "it  will  vex  Charles. 
You  would  laugh,  or  you  would  cry,  perhaps  both, 
to  see  us  sit  together,  looking  at  each  other  with  long 
and  rueful  faces,  and  saying,  '  How  do  you  do  ? '  and 
'How  do  YOU  do?'  and  then  we  fall  a-crying  and 
G  81 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

say  we  will  be  better  on  the  morrow.  Charles  says 
we  are  like  tooth-ache  and  his  friend  gum-boil,  which 
though  a  kind  of  ease  is  an  uneasy  kind  of  ease." 
But  it  was  only  to  a  few  of  his  nearest  friends,  like 
Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  that  Lamb  would  make 
any  mention  of  his  anxieties ;  and  to  them  almost 
always  in  a  tone  of  cheer.  Once  only,  after  the  re- 
pulse of  his  boyish  attachment  for  Anne  Simmons, 
did  he  allow  himself  to  think  of  any  other  love  so 
near  as  Mary's  —  and  then  only  for  a  few  hours. 
One  lonely  day  in  1819,  his  long-cherished  friendship 
for  that  charming  actress  and  large-hearted  woman, 
Fanny  Kelly,  so  far  got  the  better  of  his  prudence 
that  he  wrote  her  a  proposal  of  marriage.  When 
she  declined  it,  with  a  grace  and  kindness  worthy 
herself,  Lamb  sat  down  at  once  and  wrote  the  fol- 
lowing note :  — 

"  DEAR  Miss  KELLY,  —  Your  injunctions  shall  be 
obeyed  to  a  tittle.  I  feel  myself  in  a  lackadaisical, 
no-how-ish  kind  of  humor.  I  believe  it  is  the  rain 
or  something.  I  had  thought  to  have  written  seri- 
ously, but  I  fancy  I  succeed  best  in  epistles  of  mere 
fun;  puns  and  that  nonsense.  You  will  be  good 
friends  with  us,  will  you  not?  Let  what  has  past 
'break  no  bones'  between  us. 

"  Yours  very  truly, 

"C.  L. 
82 


CHARLES   LAMB 

"  Do  you  not  observe  the  delicacy  of  not  signing 
my  full  name? 

"  N.B.  Do  not  paste  that  last  letter  of  mine  into 
your  Book." 

Nobody  will  question  the  verdict  of  Lamb's  best 
biographer,  Mr.  Lucas,  that  there  is  no  better  letter 
than  that  in  English  literature,  "nor,  in  its  instant 
acceptance  of  defeat,  its  brave  half -smiling  admission 
that  yet  another  dream  was  shattered,  one  more 
pathetic." 

Through  all  those  years  Lamb  never  complained ; 
he  never  railed  at  the  universe ;  he  never  put  on  any 
airs  of  heroic  endurance  or  virtuous  resignation.  He 
bore  his  burdens  and  did  his  duty  like  a  man.  Some 
of  the  most  characteristic  phases  of  his  humor,  when 
closely  scanned,  turn  out  to  be  only  the  obverse  of 
this  manly  sincerity  and  endurance.  Just  because 
life  was  to  him  so  serious  a  matter,  he  took  delight 
in  upsetting  those  people  who  are  always  mistaking 
stupidity  for  seriousness  and  dulness  for  dignity. 
He  had  perhaps  too  little  patience  with  those  aggres- 
sively earnest  folk,  bent  on  improving  their  minds 
or  souls  —  and  ours ;  especially  worthy  women  of 
that  kind,  who  have  missions  and  ideas  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing.  There  is  a  racy  letter  in  which  he  tells 
Coleridge  of  an  evening  he  and  his  sister  have  en- 
dured tea-drinking  with  one  of  Coleridge's  admirers, 

83 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

a  Miss  Benje  or  Benjay,  who  discussed  Hannah  More 
and  Pope's  poetry  and  Doctor  Gregory,  and  defended 
the  opinion  that  differences  of  human  intellect  are 
the  effect  of  organization.  "I  attempted  to  carry  it 
off  with  a  pun  on  organ,  but  it  went  off  very  flat, 
and  she  immediately  conceived  a  very  low  opinion  of 
my  metaphysics,  and  turning  to  Mary,  put  some 
question  to  her  in  French,  probably  having  heard 
that  neither  Mary  nor  I  understand  French." 

So,  too,  his  healthy  dislike  for  all  affectations  of 
sensibility  often  gave  a  rude  shock  to  the  soft  senti- 
mentalists. "Mr.  Lamb,"  said  a  lady  to  him,  "I 
think  so  highly  of  my  pastor,  because  I  know  him  so 
well;  you  don't  know  him,  Mr.  Lamb,  but  I  know 
him  so  well."  "N-no,  madam,"  said  Lamb,  "I 
d-don't  know  him;  but  d-damn  him  at  a  venture, 
madam,  d-damn  him  at  a  venture!"  For  himself 
he  had  an  almost  hysterical  dread  of  seeming  to 
invite  a  condescending  sympathy  or  approval.  He 
refused  to  be  pitied.  "For  God's  sake,"  he  wrote 
Coleridge,  "don't  make  me  ridiculous  any  more 
by  terming  me  '  gen  tie-hearted'  in  print;"  and,  in 
his  next  letter,  "blot  out  ' gentle-hearted'  and  sub- 
stitute drunken-dog,  ragged-head,  seld-shaven,  odd- 
eyed,  stuttering,  or  any  other  epithet  which  truly 
and  properly  belongs  to  the  gentleman  in  question." 
Genuinely  bashful,  afraid  of  being  misunderstood, 
when  he  deemed  his  listener  either  hostile  or  patroniz- 

84 


CHARLES    LAMB 

ing,  he  sometimes  took  a  perverse  pleasure  in  making 
himself  as  disagreeable  or  as  inane  as  possible.  It 
was  the  contrariness  of  the  boy  in  him.  Patmore  said 
that  to  those  who  didn't  know  him,  or  knowing, 
could  not  or  did  not  appreciate  him,  he  passed  for 
"  something  between  an  imbecile,  a  brute,  and  a 
buffoon."  One  can  well  imagine  his  mood  when 
confronted  with  the  grim  rigor  of  Mr.  Thomas 
Carlyle.  Yet  his  most  audacious  impudence  was 
oftenest  put  on  to  cover  his  own  tenderness,  or  to 
prevent  some  over-effusiveness  from  his  friends. 
"My  sister  Mary,"  he  said  on  introducing  her  to 
Tom  Hood.  "  Allow  me  to  introduce  my  sister  Mary, 
she  is  a  very  good  woman,  but  she  d-drinks !"  Un- 
derneath all  this  whimsicality  there  was  a  foundation 
of  patient,  unselfish  endurance.  His  humor  is  like 
his  smile;  a  quizzical  yet  appealing  smile,  behind 
which,  they  tell  us,  there  always  seemed  a  tender 
background  of  far-away  sadness  —  traces  of  the  toil 
and  struggle  of  his  life  seen  through  whatever  mask 
the  humor  of  the  hour  might  put  on.  "  His  serious 
conversation,  like  his  serious  writing,"  says  Hazlitt, 
"  is  his  best.  His  jests  scald  like  tears,  and  he  probes 
a  question  with  a  play  upon  words."  The  heroism 
of  such  a  life,  I  should  say,  is  of  a  higher  and  harder 
sort  than  Mr.  Carlyle's  loud  heroism  of  eloquence. 
There  is  no  need  to  deny  Lamb  his  frailties.  He 
doubtless  exaggerated  his  own  vices,  and  he  took  a 

85 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

pleasure  in  mystifying  proper  persons  by  confessing 
lapses  of  which  he  was  never  guilty;  but  everybody 
knows  that  he  was  always,  in  Mary's  phrase,  rather 
smoky,  and  sometimes  rather  drinky.  As  he  owned, 
he  kept  a  little  on  this  side  of  abstemiousness.  We 
may  admit,  too,  that  in  his  last  years  the  resolute, 
persistent  whimsicality  of  the  worn  old  man  was  now 
and  then  almost  painful.  He  was  a  little  too  impa- 
tient of  the  decorum  of  years;  a  little  too  prone  to 
attempt  by  sheer  frivolity  to  escape  the  ineluctable 
demands  of  age.  But  he  must  be  either  a  very 
blind  or  a  very  sour-spirited  critic  who  cannot  see 
that  these  failings  were  mostly  the  result  of  the  tragic 
circumstance  of  his  life.  He  was  by  nature  a  genial, 
rather  than  a  jovial,  man,  select  rather  than  indis- 
criminate in  his  friendships.  I  do  not  find  that  in 
his  early  years  he  had  any  intimate  friends  besides 
Coleridge.  But  after  insanity  fell  upon  Mary,  he 
felt  himself  forced  to  seek  wider  and  more  jovial 
companionship  that  he  might  escape  the  gloom  and 
monotony  of  his  life,  and  the  danger  of  such  life  for 
her.  Some  of  the  acquaintances  he  picked  up  while 
he  was  slaving  for  London  journals  were  poor  devils 
like  Fell  and  Fenwick,  who  could  make  but  slender 
claim  either  to  ability  or  to  morals ;  but  Lamb,  at 
all  events,  was  attracted  by  what  was  best  in  them, 
and  he  never  admitted  them  to  the  circle  of  his  inti- 
mates. He  loved  the  humors  of  life,  and  always 

86 


CHARLES   LAMB 

preferred  in  his  friends  some  flavor  of  originality 
to  prosaic  common  sense.  As  he  says  in  that  acute 
piece  of  self-analysis,  the  Preface  to  the  Second 
Edition  of  the  Elia  Essays:  — 

"He  chose  his  companions  for  some  individuality 
of  character  which  they  manifested.  His  intimates, 
to  confess  a  truth,  were  in  the  world's  eye  a  ragged 
regiment.  He  found  them  floating  on  the  surface  of 
society ;  and  the  color,  or  something  else,  in  the  weed 
pleased  him.  The  burrs  stuck  to  him  —  but  they 
were  good  and  loving  burrs  for  all  that.  He  never 
greatly  cared  for  the  society  of  what  are  called  good 
people." 

George  Dyer,  Martin  Burney,  Jem  White,  Thomas 
Manning,  William  Ayrton  —  what  an  interesting 
company  of  eccentrics  they  form;  and  we  should 
hardly  have  known  them  at  all  had  we  not  met  them 
at  Lamb's  hospitable  bachelor  table.  And  besides 
them  there  is  a  goodly  company  of  friends  not  un- 
known to  fame,  Hazlitt,  Procter,  Crabb  Robinson, 
Tom  Hood,  Cowden  Clark,  Leigh  Hunt,  and  the 
rest.  To  say  truth,  Lamb  had  a  genius  for  friend- 
ship. He  could  discover  something  amiable  in  every- 
body. He  drew  about  him  men  who  were  polar 
opposites  in  temperament  and  bitterly  antagonistic 
in  opinion;  men  like  Godwin  and  Wordsworth, 

87 


A   GROUP   OF    ENGLISH    ESSAYISTS 

Hunt  and  Southey,  who  would  never  have  given  a 
hand  to  each  other  save  on  the  common  ground  of 
their  friendship  for  Lamb.  He  stoutly  defended  them 
to  each  other,  and  appreciated  whatever  was  genuine 
and  human  in  them  all.  He  made  free  with  their 
follies,  quizzed  them  on  their  fads  or  peculiarities 
with  an  impudence  that  might  have  been  intolerable 
in  any  one  else.  "  M-martin,"  he  stammered  out  over 
the  whist  table  to  Burney,  "  if  d-dirt  were  trumps, 
what  a  hand  you'd  hold!"  When  Coleridge  talked 
a  stricken  hour,  wrapped  in  a  cloud  of  lofty  meta- 
physic,  Lamb  only  remarked  dryly,  "  Coleridge  is 
so  full  of  his  fun !"  But  no  one  took  offence.  In- 
deed no  one  could  be  more  quick  than  Lamb  him- 
self to  perceive,  or  more  careful  to  avoid,  anything 
that  might  wound  the  feelings  of  others.  Men  who, 
like  Hazlitt,  quarrelled  with  everybody  else,  never 
could  quarrel  with  him.  It  was  Charles  and  Mary 
Lamb,  and  one  may  say  only  they,  that  could  keep 
the  friendship  of  William  Hazlitt  and  Sarah  Stoddard, 
not  only  before  their  ill-assorted  marriage,  —  at 
which  ceremony  Lamb  confessed  he  was  convulsed 
with  mistimed  laughter,  —  but  when,  in  the  later 
days,  they  were  separated  from  each  other  and  from 
everybody  else.  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb  would 
cherish  no  resentment  for  any  slight,  or  misunder- 
standing, or  desertion.  When  Hazlitt  lay  in  his  last 
illness  alone  and  unbefriended,  it  was  Lamb  who 

88 


CHARLES    LAMB 

hastened  to  visit  him,  stood  by  his  bedside,  and  held 
the  hand  of  the  dying  man  to  the  end. 

But  it  should  be  remembered  that  Lamb's  best  and 
closest  friends  were  precisely  the  best  and  greatest 
men  of  his  time.  He  was  surrounded  by  an  oddly 
assorted  company  on  the  Wednesday  evenings ;  but 
he  kept  his  closest  intimacy  for  two  or  three  —  for 
Coleridge  and  the  Wordsworths.  There  are  few 
letters  in  the  language  like  those  of  Lamb  to  the 
Wordsworths,  so  full  of  mingled  humor  and  pathos, 
of  the  most  delicate  sympathies.  These  people  really 
kriew  each  other  —  which  is  too  uncommon  a  thing 
in  this  world.  And  this  is  Lamb's  last  letter  to  Cole- 
ridge, written  probably,  as  Mr.  Dykes  Campbell  sug- 
gests, to  remove  some  mistaken,  sick  man's  fancy :  — 

"  MY  DEAR  COLERIDGE,  —  Not  one  unkind  thought 
has  passed  in  my  brain  about  you.  ...  If  you  ever 
thought  an  offence,  much  more  wrote  it  against  me,  it 
must  have  been  in  the  times  of  Noah,  and  the  great 
waters  swept  it  away.  Mary's  most  kind  love,  and 
maybe  a  wrong  prophet  of  your  bodings !  —  here  she 
is  crying  for  mere  love  over  your  letter.  I  wring  out 
less,  but  not  sincerer,  showers." 

Two  years  later,  Coleridge,  at  the  end  of  his  weary 
illness,  turning  over  the  pages  of  his  early  poems, 
comes  upon  that  one,  The  Lime-Tree  Bower  My 
Prison,  written  during  the  visit  of  Charles  and  Mary 

89 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Lamb  to  Nether  Stowey,  so  long  ago,  when  they  were 
all  young  and  happy ;  and  he  writes  under  it :  "Ch. 
and  Mary  Lamb  —  dear  to  my  heart,  yea,  as  it 
were  my  heart.  S.  T.  C.  JEt  63,  1834.  1797-1834, 
37  years!"  When  he  died,  Lamb  went  broken- 
hearted, murmuring  to  himself,  "Coleridge  is  dead, 
Coleridge  is  dead!"  In  almost  his  last  recorded 
lines  he  writes:  "His  great  and  dear  spirit  haunts 
me.  I  cannot  make  a  criticism  on  men  and  books 
without  an  ineffectual  turning  and  reference  to  him." 
And  a  few  days  later  he  followed  his  old  familiar 
friend.  I  say  it  warms  the  heart  to  think  of  such  a 
friendship  as  this,  and  makes  us  deem  more  nobly 
of  human  nature.  Thomas  Carlyle,  seeing  Lamb 
in  those  last  years,  notes  in  him  "insuperable  pro- 
clivity to  gin";  judges  there  is  "a  most  slender  fibre 
of  actual  worth  in  that  poor  Charles."  William 
Wordsworth,  writing  a  few  months  after  Lamb  had 
gone,  cries  out  — 

"O  he  was  good,  if  e'er  a  good  man  lived !" 

So  blindly  may  the  jaundiced  cynic  misinterpret  the 
man  whom  the  wise  poet  understands. 

II 

Literature,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  always  an 
avocation  to  Lamb.  His  Works  were  mostly  written 
at  the  desk's  dull  wood,  where  he  labored  eight  — 

90 


CHARLES   LAMB 

sometimes  nine  or  ten  —  hours  a  day,  six  days  in  a 
week,  with  only  a  short  vacation  in  summer,  for 
thirty-six  years.  In  the  eighteenth  century  it  used 
to  be  thought  difficult  to  be  in  literature  —  or  in 
love  —  and  yet  attend  to  business.  Pope  has  some 
rather  mean  flings  at 

"The  clerk  foredoomed  his  father's  soul  to  cross, 
Who  pens  a  stanza  when  he  should  engross." 

But  in  later  years  it  has  been  found  there  is  neither 
difficulty  nor  discredit  in  such  a  combination.  Lamb 
is  among  the  first  in  a  long  succession  of  writers  — 
Rogers,  Stuart  Mill,  Anthony  Trollope,  William 
Morris,  Edmund  Gosse,  Austin  Dobson,  Maurice 
Hewlett,  and  others  —  who  have  managed  to  unite 
business  and  literature  without  detriment  to  either. 
For  Lamb,  at  all  events,  such  a  position  —  save  that 
his  hours  were  too  long  —  was  doubtless  fortunate. 
It  gave  him  regular  employment  which  occupied, 
without  overtaxing,  his  thought ;  it  gave  certain  and 
definite  remuneration  which  put  him  beyond  the  reach 
of  serious  financial  anxiety.  But  a  life  so  confining 
left  not  much  leisure  for  literary  work ;  and  this  may 
be  one  reason  why,  all  through  his  early  years,  Lamb 
produced  so  little.  The  Elia  Essays,  which  to 
most  people  stand  for  Lamb's  work,  were  written 
after  he  was  forty-five  years  old;  and  all  his  writing 
before  the  Elia  Essays  fills  only  two  thin  volumes. 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

But  it  is  not  chiefly  the  confinement  of  his  work 
at  the  India  House  that  explains  this  scantiness  of 
product  during  the  early  years;  for  the  Elia  Essays 
themselves  were  mostly  written  in  the  years  1820 
and  1821,  when  his  duties  in  the  counting  room  were 
most  onerous.  The  truth  is,  rather,  that  up  to 
1820  he  had  not  really  found  his  vein.  His  earliest 
literary  aspiration  was  to  be  a  poet  rather  than  an 
essayist.  Four  sonnets  from  his  pen  were  included 
in  Coleridge's  first  volume  of  verse,  published  in 
1796,  and  the  second  edition  of  that  volume,  next 
year,  contained  a  considerable  number  of  short 
poems  by  Lamb.  The  sonnet  form,  then  for  a 
long  time  unfamiliar  in  English  verse,  he  probably 
borrowed  from  Bowles,  to  whose  work  he  had  been 
introduced  by  Coleridge.  In  sentiment,  too,  by 
their  gentle  grace  touched  with  a  placid  melancholy, 
these  sonnets  may  remind  us  of  Bowles.  Some 
fragmentary  pieces  of  blank  verse  show  plainly 
the  influence  of  Milton  and  especially  of  Cowper, 
whom  Lamb  in  those  early  days  greatly  admired. 
"I  could  forgive  a  man  for  not  enjoying  Milton," 
he  wrote  Coleridge  in  1796,  "but  I  would  not  call 
that  man  my  friend  who  should  be  offended  with  the 
divine  chit-chat  of  Cowper."  Burns,  also,  had  been 
for  some  years,  he  declared,  the  god  of  his  idolatry; 
but  I  can  see  no  trace  whatever  in  this  early  verse 
of  the  vigor,  passion,  or  humor  of  the  Scotch  poet. 

92 


CHARLES   LAMB 

Nearly  all  the  poetry  before  1800  came  out  of  the 
trials  of  his  own  life,  the  hapless  love  for  the  "fair- 
haired  Anna"  and  the  tragedy  of  his  sister's  mad- 
ness. Much  of  it  is  in  a  tone  of  half-despondent 
but  pious  resignation,  but  with  little  of  Lamb's 
peculiar  fancy  and  altogether  without  humor.  It  is 
all  sincere,  but  only  once  —  in  the  Old  Familiar 
Faces  —  do  we  get  the  note  of  sheer  intense  emotion, 
that  without  the  aid  of  imagery,  rhyme,  or  definite 
metre,  shapes  his  lines  into  truest  poetry.  The 
album  verses  and  the  occasional  poetry  of  his  later 
years  are  most  of  them,  like  the  early  work,  in  re- 
flective or  pathetic,  not  in  humorous,  tone.  We 
recognize  frequently  in  them  the  quaint  fancy  of  the 
seventeenth-century  men  of  whom  he  was  so  fond; 
in  one  or  two  instances  the  union  of  subtle  or  ingen- 
ious thought  with  deep  tenderness  of  feeling  makes  a 
poem  of  striking  quality.  Such  lines,  for  instance, 
as  those  he  sent  to  Tom  Hood  on  the  death  of  his 
child,  On  an  Infant  dying  as  soon  as  Born,  could 
hardly  have  been  written  by  any  other  poet  of  the 
nineteenth  century;  to  find  anything  like  them  you 
must  go  back  to  Wither  or  Crashaw.  One  or  two  of 
the  later  poems,  however,  have  nothing  of  this 
archaic  manner,  but,  like  the  Old  Familiar  Faces, 
show  that  unconsciousness  of  utter  sincerity  which 
is  the  last  charm  of  lyric  verse.  The  lines  to  Hester 
Savory,  the  sprightly  and  comely  Quaker  girl  that 

93 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

caught  his  fancy  while  he  was  living  at  Pentonville, 

"When  maidens  such  as  Hester  die/' 
once  read,  can  never  be  forgotten.  Lamb  had  but 
slender  poetic  gift,  doubtless;  yet  he  wrote  two  or 
three  lyrics  of  keen  emotional  power,  and  the  subtle 
charm  of  his  personality  frequently  gave  to  his 
more  trivial  and  fragmentary  verse  an  interest 
which  the  critic  hardly  knows  how  to  justify. 

Much  the  same  may  be  said  of  his  early  story, 
Rosamund  Gray.  One  might  expect,  from  its  plot 
and  its  chief  actors,  this  little  romance  to  be  a  crude 
mixture  of  tragedy  and  sentimentality.  The  villain 
is  a  quite  impossible  person  whom  Lamb  got  out  of 
his  reading;  he  bears  the  name  of  one  of  the 
murderers  in  Marlowe's  Edward  Second,  and  really 
has  no  character  at  all,  being  a  kind  of  diabolus 
ex  machina.  Rosamund  Gray,  the  heroine,  is  one  of 
the  helpless,  innocent  maidens  so  common  in  senti- 
mental fiction  after  Richardson.  The  action  is 
baldly  melodramatic.  Yet  into  this  improbable 
story  Lamb  has  put  so  much  of  his  native  delicacy  of 
feeling,  and  he  has  told  it  with  such  an  artless,  old- 
fashioned  grace  of  style,  as  to  make  it  altogether 
delightful,  if  not  altogether  convincing.  Its  opening 
words  strike  the  note  that  is  sustained  throughout: 

"  It  was  noon-tide.  The  sun  was  very  hot.  An  old 
gentlewoman  sat  spinning  in  a  little  arbor  at  the 

94 


CHARLES   LAMB 

door  of  her  cottage.  She  was  blind;  and  her  grand- 
daughter was  reading  the  Bible  to  her.  The  old  lady 
had  just  left  her  work  to  attend  to  the  story  of  Ruth." 

The  Rosamund  Gray,  moreover,  has  special  bio- 
graphical interest.  It  was  written  just  after  Lamb 
had  been  forced  to  relinquish  thoughts  of  any 
woman's  love  save  his  sister's,  and  it  is  touched 
with  the  pathos  of  that  resignation.  Rosamund 
Gray,  the  mild-eyed  maid  whom  everybody  loved, 
whose  hair  fell  in  bright  and  circling  clusters,  is 
evidently  Lamb's  "fair  Alice  W."  More  than  a 
quarter-century  afterwards,  in  that  charming  essay, 

Blakesmoor  in  H shire,  in  describing  an  old 

portrait,  he  speaks  of  the  bright  yellow  Hertford- 
shire hair,  "so  like  my  Alice."  The  lover  in  the 
story,  Allen  Clare,  and  his  sister  Eleanor  are  Charles 
and  Mary  Lamb;  old  blind  Margaret  is  their 
grandmother,  Mrs.  Field,  whose  picture  Lamb  had 
already  drawn  in  one  of  his  early  poems;  while  the 
scenery  of  the  tale  is  that  of  the  home  of  the  fair 
Alice,  the  tiny  village  of  Widmore  in  Hertfordshire, 
which  he  described  so  lovingly  long  afterwards  in 
the  Blakesmoor  essay. 

A  lover  of  drama  and  the  stage  from  boyhood,  it 
was  natural  that  Lamb  should  try  his  hand  at  dra- 
matic composition.  But  he  never  succeeded.  In 
truth,  he  was  without  the  first  requisites  of  success. 

95 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

He  had  little  creative  imagination,  and  he  had  no 
constructive  ability.  He  could  not  conceive  or  por- 
tray original  characters;  he  could  not  invent  effec- 
tive situations.  His  farce,  Mr.  H.,  which  he  had 
hoped  might  be  a  stage  success,  was  promptly 
damned  before  the  first  representation  was  half 
over  —  as  it  deserved  to  be.  Lamb  himself,  though 
chapfallen  over  his  failure,  had  sense  enough  to 
hiss  among  the  loudest.  The  motive  —  the  troubles 
of  a  man  who  endeavors  to  conceal  his  name,  Hogs- 
flesh  —  is  too  puerile  even  for  farce;  and  the  changes 
are  rung  on  the  unfortunate  word  with  dreary  repe- 
tition. Lamb  had  not  the  gift  to  write  a  brilliant 
or  witty  dialogue.  He  could  not  get  out  of  him- 
self; and  his  own  humor,  the  humor  of  Elia,  is  too 
subtle,  too  peculiarly  his  own  for  the  broad  and 
obvious  effects  that  comedy  demands.  Nor  is  the 
tragedy,  John  Woodvil,  much  more  successful. 
It  is  dignified  and  serious,  and  its  manner  here  and 
there  so  close  an  imitation  of  the  Elizabethans  that 
Godwin,  coming  upon  some  lines  from  it,  was  sure 
he  had  seen  them  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  But 
it  has  no  real  characters,  no  action,  and  no  adequate 
motive  for  any  action.  And  while  the  style,  in 
some  passages,  may  remind  us  by  diction  and 
rhythm  of  our  elder  drama,  it  has  nothing  of  the 
passion  and  intensity  which  characterized  that  large 
utterance  of  the  early  gods. 

96 


CHARLES   LAMB 

In  fact,  as  Mr.  Ainger  suggests,  John  Woodvil 
is  of  interest  chiefly  as  showing  how  thoroughly 
Lamb  had  already  immersed  himself  in  our  Eliza- 
bethan drama.  The  riper  fruits  of  that  study  were 
seen  in  the  volume  of  Specimens  from  English 
Dramatic  Poets,  which  appeared  in  1808.  This 
well-known  book,  though  it  is  a  florilegium  from 
the  older  drama  with  comparatively  little  comment 
by  Lamb,  is  probably  his  most  important,  as  it  is 
his  best-known,  contribution  to  literary  criticism.  We 
should  remember  that  in  1808  the  great  body  of 
Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  drama  was  practically 
unknown  to  intelligent  readers.  Coleridge's  lec- 
tures did  not  touch  the  drama  outside  of  Shakespeare 
until  1818;  Hazlitt's  course  on  the  drama  was  not 
given  until  1821.  There  were,  indeed,  some  indica- 
tions of  a  reviving  interest  in  the  drama,  as  in  all 
our  older  and  romantic  literature.  Gifford's  first 
edition  of  Massinger  was  published  in  1805;  in 
1811,  three  years  after  Lamb's  book,  Weber  issued 
his  edition  of  Ford,  warmly  commended  by  Jeffrey 
in  the  Edinburgh.  Yet  it  may  be  truthfully  said 
that  it  was  Lamb,  rather  than  any  one  else,  who 
first  led  the  average  well-read  Englishman  to  think 
he  ought  to  know  something  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  Ford,  Massinger,  Hey  wood,  Webster. 
Since  his  time  these  old  masters  have  received, 
perhaps,  quite  as  much  praise  as  they  deserve. 
H  97 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

And  for  this  over-commendation,  too,  Lamb's 
book  is  largely  responsible.  In  truth,  whoever  forms 
his  estimate  of  the  elder  drama  from  Lamb's  speci- 
mens will  be  likely  to  get  an  exaggerated  idea  of 
its  merits.  He  was  captivated  by  the  large  imagina- 
tion in  the  speech  of  these  men  and  by  their  power 
to  show  the  human  soul  in  its  moods  of  struggle  or 
endurance,  beside  which  the  polished  convention- 
alities of  later  writers  seem  tame  and  flat.  But 
his  extracts  represent  their  work  only  at  its  high 
points,  and  give  no  idea  of  its  crudity  and  violence, 
its  morbid  passion  and  its  frequent  distortions  of 
character  and  motive. 

Everywhere,  indeed,  Lamb's  criticism  is  selective, 
the  criticism  of  appreciation  rather  than  of  impar- 
tial estimate.  He  pays  little  attention  to  the  meaning 
and  temper  of  the  work  as  a  whole.  He  does  not 
balance  merits  and  defects;  he  culls  out  passages 
pleasing  to  linger  over  with  deliberate,  prolonged 
satisfaction.  He  treated  his  books  as  he  treated  his 
friends  —  enjoyed  whatever  in  them  was  true  or 
original,  overlooked  or  minimized  their  failings. 
The  rule  is  perhaps  better  for  friendship  than  for 
criticism;  yet  critical  judgment  of  this  sort,  if  less 
impartial,  is  more  sympathetic  and  penetrating. 
For  the  same  reason  Lamb's  criticism  was  not 
technical  or  academic,  but  moral.  He  cared  little 
for  mere  form.  He  brought  literature  to  the  test 


CHARLES   LAMB 

of  life.  The  author  of  a  book,  the  characters  in  a 
book,  were  to  him  men  to  be  liked  or  disliked, 
to  be  judged  by  the  same  standards  we  apply 
to  our  neighbors.  That  is  what  often  makes  a 
passing  remark  of  Lamb's  worth  a  half-dozen 
pages  of  analysis.  Thus,  in  his  rambling  essay  on 
Some  of  the  Old  Actors,  the  few  lines  in  which 
he  tells  how  Mrs.  Jordan  rendered  Viola's  dis- 
guised confession  of  love  show  Mrs.  Jordan  to 
have  been  an  excellent  actress,  but  they  also  reveal 
with  the  utmost  delicacy  of  appreciation  the  emotion 
of  Viola.  In  the  same  essay  is  incomparably  the 
best  interpretation  of  the  character  of  Malvolio 
ever  written  —  indeed  the  only  just  one  that  I  know 
of.  These  persons  were  as  real  to  Lamb's  thought  as 
Hazlitt  or  Manning;  he  loved  to  dwell  on  their 
peculiarities,  to  delight  his  sense  of  humor  by  re- 
calling all  they  say  and  do.  And  in  every  case  it 
was  Shakespeare's  Malvolio  or  Viola  that  he  knew, 
not  some  actor's.  An  inveterate  playgoer,  he  never- 
theless felt  the  danger  of  forming  acquaintance 
with  Shakespeare's  men  and  women  on  the  stage 
rather  than  in  the  study  of  the  imagination.  This 
is  the  theme  of  that  essay  often  thought  so  para- 
doxical from  him,  On  the  Tragedies  of  Shake- 
speare. Shakespeare's  plays,  he  declares,  are  less 
suited  for  representation  than  almost  any  other, 
simply  because  there  is  in  his  work  more  of  that 

99 


A   GROUP   OF    ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

element  that  defies  outward  expression.  In  propor- 
tion as  a  play  is  laden  with  deep  moral  significance, 
in  proportion  as  its  inner  meaning  is  more  impor- 
tant than  its  outward  action,  just  in  that  proportion 
is  the  player  likely  to  give  it  a  wrong  emphasis. 
And  this  is  true. 

Lamb's  critical  appreciation  was  curiously  limited. 
Contemporary  works,  save  those  by  his  personal 
friends,  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  Southey,  he 
seldom  looked  into.  "When  a  new  book  comes 
out,"  said  he,  "I  read  an  old  one."  In  those  years 
all  the  world  was  reading  and  praising  the  poems 
and  novels  of  Scott;  I  do  not  recall  any  mention  of 
them  by  Lamb.  Byron  he  detested  as  a  man,  and 
refused  to  read  him  —  "  he  is  great  in  so  small  a  way. " 
Shelley's  unsubstantial  verse  he  could  make  nothing 
of.  In  truth,  he  did  not  much  sympathize  with  any 
of  the  new  romance.  In  the  Elizabethans  romance 
and  adventure  were  fitting.  They  lived  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  imagination;  the  world  they  portrayed 
was  their  own  world.  But  that  a  sober  country 
gentleman  wrho  contributed  to  the  Quarterly  Review, 
or  a  dandy  lord  who  was  idolized  by  London 
society,  should  go  so  far  afield  into  medievalism 
and  orientalism  for  themes  of  song  or  story,  that 
seemed  to  him  labored  and  unnatural.  For  himself 
he  liked  the  homely  cockney  ways  of  the  town 
better;  and  no  strange  foreign  strand  had  for  him 

100 


CHARLES   LAMB 

half  the  charms  of  that  which  runs  from  Charing 
Cross  to  Temple  Bar. 

Lamb  has  a  few  very  characteristic  papers  on  the 
kindred  art  of  painting.  Perhaps  the  most  ambitious 
of  all  his  critical  essays  is  that  On  the  Genius  of 
Hogarth.  He  makes  no  pretension  to  knowledge  of 
the  artist's  technique ;  he  judges  a  painting  solely 
by  what  might  be  called  its  literary  quality,  its  imagi- 
native power  to  suggest  vividly  some  phase  of  human 
life.  Another  essay,  On  the  Barrenness  of  the  Imagi- 
native Faculty  in  the  Productions  of  Modern  Art, 
contains  in  its  few  pages  more  keenness  and  truth  of 
vision  than  are  found  in  many  learned  modern  dis- 
cussions of  realism  and  idealism.  Contemporary 
art,  Lamb  complains,  is  content  with  empty  pictorial 
effects,  and  quite  powerless  to  tell  anything  imagi- 
natively. Not  so  the  elder  men.  This  essay  begins 
with  a  description,  or  rather  an  interpretation,  of 
Titian's  great  Bacchus  and  Ariadne  in  the  National 
Gallery  which  makes  no  mention  of  Titian's  glory  of 
color,  but  indicates  admirably  that  wealth  of  sugges- 
tion which  seemed  to  Lamb  the  secret  of  art. 

"  Is  there  anything  in  modern  art  —  we  will  not 
demand  that  it  should  be  equal  —  but  in  any  way 
analogous  to  what  Titian  has  effected  in  that  wonder- 
ful bringing  together  of  two  times  in  the  Ariadne  in 
the  National  Gallery  ?  Precipitous,  with  his  reeling 

IOI 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Satyr  rout  about  him,  repeopling  and  reilluming 
suddenly  the  waste  places,  drunk  with  a  new  fury 
beyond  the  grape,  Bacchus,  born  in  fire,  firelike 
flings  himself  at  the  Cretan.  This  is  the  time  pres- 
ent. With  this  telling  of  the  story  an  artist,  and  no 
ordinary  one,  might  remain  richly  proud.  Guido 
in  his  harmonious  version  of  it  saw  no  further.  But 
from  the  depths  of  the  imaginative  spirit  Titian  has 
recalled  past  time,  and  laid  it  contributory  with  the 
present  to  one  simultaneous  effect.  With  the  desert 
all  ringing  with  the  mad  cymbals  of  his  followers, 
made  lucid  with  the  presence  and  new  offers  of  a  god, 
—  as  if  unconscious  of  Bacchus  or  but  idly  casting 
her  eyes  as  upon  some  unconcerning  pageant  —  her 
soul  undistracted  from  Theseus,  —  Ariadne  is  still 
pacing  the  solitary  shore,  in  as  much  heart  silence 
and  in  almost  the  same  local  solitude,  with  which  she 
awoke  at  daybreak  to  catch  the  forlorn  last  glances 
of  the  sail  that  bore  away  the  Athenian.'* 

Most  of  Lamb's  criticism,  however,  is  fragmentary, 
informal ;  much  of  it  is  scattered  through  his  private 
correspondence,  especially  in  the  letters  to  Cole- 
ridge, Lloyd,  and  Wordsworth.  There  might  be 
culled  from  his  writings  a  volume  of  acute  and 
stimulating  literary  comment.  And  it  should  be 
added  that  all  this  early  work,  whether  poetry,  story, 
or  criticism,  is  written  in  an  English  chaste,  simple, 

102 


CHARLES   LAMB 

but  not  meagre,  such  as  hardly  any  other  prose- writer 
between  1790  and  1810  could  command. 

But,  after  all,  we  shall  always  think  of  Lamb  not 
as  poet  or  critic,  but  as  humorist.  And  rightly.  He 
was,  indeed,  at  the  farthest  possible  remove  from  that 
dreary  person,  the  professional  humorist.  Of  all 
humor  his  certainly  is  the  most  spontaneous  and 
original.  He  was  a  species  all  by  himself  —  a  bundle 
of  the  most  delightful  and  unaccountable  whimsi- 
calities. He  had  the  jester's  love  for  pure  nonsense, 
for  the  ridiculous,  pure  and  simple.  He  will  suggest 
with  grave  face  some  droll  conceit,  or  tell  some  waggish 
story,  that  trips  up  the  heels  of  your  gravity  by  its 
sheer  absurdity.  Among  his  minor  papers  is  an 
account  of  a  fat  woman  in  Oxford,  —  The  Gentle  Gi- 
antess, —  that  no  man  who  isn't  starched  intolerably 
stiff  can  read  without  shaking  in  laughter,  —  pure 
farce  told  in  the  solemn  phrase  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne. 
Of  puns,  which  many  people  of  weighty  converse 
feel  bound  to  depreciate,  he  was  a  very  great  master; 
and  the  effect  of  his  puns  was  doubled,  as  he  very 
well  knew,  by  his  stammer.  As  one  of  his  friends 
said,  he  stammered  just  enough  to  make  you  listen 
eagerly  for  the  word.  His .  good-natured  critical 
thrusts  were  often  barbed  with  a  pun.  "Here's 
Wordsworth,"  he  stammered,  after  the  poet  had  been 
offering  some  rather  lofty  criticism  on  Shakespeare, 
"he  says  he  could  have  written  H-Hamlet  himself, 

103 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

if  he  only  had  the  m-mind!"  And  then  he  had  a 
thousand  quips  and  cranks  of  freakish  fancy  that 
altogether  defy  classification.  Of  course  it  was  in 
his  talk  that  these  whimsicalities  showed  best,  the 
suggestions  of  the  moment  accompanied  by  the 
twinkle  of  his  eye  and  the  droll  tones  of  his  speech. 
Such  bubbles  burst  as  soon  as  blown;  they  cannot 
be  repeated.  Many  of  Lamb's  good  things  have, 
indeed,  been  told  over  and  over  again,  and  deserve 
to  be;  yet  all  who  knew  him  declared  that,  as  we 
may  well  believe,  no  report  can  give  any  adequate 
notion  of  that  talk,  —  talk  like  snap-dragon,  as  Haz- 
litt  said,  sparkling  with  quaint  or  witty  sayings,  bits 
of  waggish  impudence,  happy  epithet  and  allusion, 
passing  abruptly  to  some  large  or  serious  theme, 
brightened  by  a  constant  play  of  imagination,  and  shot 
through  with  sudden  soft  lights  of  tender  feeling.  It 
is,  I  suspect,  only  in  his  letters  that  we  get  some  idea 
of  the  charm  of  his  familiar  talk.  All  the  letters  to 
Manning,  for  example,  are  delectable. 

But  if  the  letters  give  the  best  picture  of  Lamb's 
wit  and  vivacity,  it  is  in  the  Elia  Essays  that  we 
see  the  inmost  part  of  him.  There  areJifty  of  these 
essays.  Of  this  number  two  are  half-humorous 
fantasies  not  quite  in  his  best  manner,  The  New 
Year's  Coming  of  Age  and  The  Child  Angel;  seven 
are  critical ;  eight  are  papers  of  humorous  observa- 
tion and  comment,  like  The  Decay  of  Beggars  or 

104 


CHARLES  LAMB 

A  Quakers'  Meeting;  the  remaining  thirty-four  are 
pure  autobiography,  concerned  entirely  with  the 
records  of  Lamb's  own  habits,  or  friendships,  or 
memories.  They  are  all  in  the  first  person,  and  most 
of  them  look  backward  and  linger  in  half-pathetic 
mood  over  the  charm  of  things  gone  by.  But  in  all 
of  them,  even  in  the  critical  papers,  there  is  a  tone  of 
ingenuous  confession,  a  confidence  in  the  sympathy 
of  the  reader.  There  is  no  ostentation  or  posing  in 
this,  no  pride  in  his  interesting  self,  not  a  trace  of  the 
Byronic  temper.  Lamb  makes  a  friend  of  you  and 
tells  you  what  he  himself  most  cares  for.  Only  an 
honest  and  kindly  nature  could  venture  to  unbosom 
itself  so  frankly.  And  even  an  honest  and  kindly 
nature,  by  presuming  too  far  upon  your  interest, 
may  easily  become  a  bore ;  but,  though  some  earnest 
folk  have  been  known  to  pronounce  Lamb  trifling  or 
perverse,  it  is  inconceivable  that  he  should  ever  be  a 
bore. 

Nor  is  Lamb's  humor,  at  least  in  the  Elm  Essays, 
ever  idle.  His  keen  enjoyment  of  the  oddities  and 
conceits  of  life  is  always  tinged  with  some  moral 
feeling.  He  delights  to  quiz  our  complacent  judg- 
ments, to  look  beneath  our  smug  conventions.  He  is 
always  getting  behind  some  sentimentality,  or  prig- 
gishness,  or  pedantry,  where  he  can  poke  delicious 
fun  at  it.  If  he  ever  grows  severe,  it  is  in  scorn  for 
those  elegant  proprieties  that  too  often  mask  Essential 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

coldness  of  heart.  "I  shall  believe,"  he  says,  "in 
the  professions  of  modern  gallantry  when  in  polite 
circles  I  see  the  same  attention  paid  to  age  as  to  youth, 
to  homely  features  as  to  handsome,  to  coarse  com- 
plexions as  to  clear  —  to  the  woman  as  she  is  a 
woman;  when  Dorimant  hands  a  fish-wife  across 
the  kennel  or  assists  the  apple  woman  to  pick  up 
her  dissipated  fruit."  On  the  other  hand,  he  had 
a  liking  for  all  such  innocent  improprieties,  weak- 
nesses, absurdities,  as  put  our  human  nature  at  a 
disadvantage  in  the  eyes  of  the  well-conducted  ma- 
jority. Odd  people,  unlucky  people,  tactless  people, 
people  in  some  way  left  out  or  left  over,  though  they 
move  his  laughter,  always  appeal  to  his  sympathy. 
It  was  not  merely  in  childhood,  as  he  avers,  but  all 
through  his  life,  that  he  had  "more  yearnings  toward 
that  simple  architect  who  built  his  house  upon  the 
sand  than  for  his  more  cautious  neighbor,  and  prized 
the  simplicity  of  the  five  thoughtless  virgins  beyond 
the  more  provident  but  somewhat  unfeminine  wari- 
ness of  their  competitors."  He  might  almost  have 
said  with  Touchstone  in  the  play,  "  It  is  a  poor  humor 
of  mine  to  take  that  no  one  else  will."  In  fact,  I 
have  sometimes  thought  that  if  you  seek  the  closest 
parallel  to  the  unique  character  of  Lamb,  you  will 
find  it,  not  in  any  veritable  man  of  letters  or  history, 
but  in  this  one  of  Shakespeare's  creations  for  whom 
we  have  no  better  name  than  "fool,"  but  who  is  in 

1 06 


CHARLES   LAMB 

truth  one  of  his  wisest  and  most  unselfish  men.  There 
is  in  both  the  same  curious  observation,  the  same 
whimsical  liking  to  turn  commonplace  wrong  side 
out,  the  same  quaint  fancy,  half  humorous  and  half 
pathetic,  the  same  fidelity  to  friends  and  deep  ten- 
derness of  heart. 

Now  it  is  in  the  Elia  Essays  that  this  subtly 
humorous  temperament  finds  fullest  expression. 
Nobody,  so  far  as  I  know,  has  succeeded  very  well 
in  giving  a  definition  of  humor.  I  certainly  shall  not 
attempt  one.  But  it  is  one  obvious  characteristic 
of  humor  that  it  can  find  a  peculiar  pleasure  in 
the  manifold  contrasts  of  life  that  most  of  us  over- 
look. When  the  lofty  and  the  humble  are  brought 
into  sudden  juxtaposition  so  as  to  emphasize 
the  lofty,  then  we  have  the  sense  of  the  sublime; 
when  the  contrast  emphasizes  the  humble,  then 
we  have  the  ludicrous,  sometimes  with  a  tone 
of  irreverence  or  vulgarity.  When  suffering  or  en- 
durance is  brought  into  contrast  with  the  common- 
place so  as  to  emphasize  the  suffering,  then  we  have 
the  sense  of  the  heroic  or  the  pathetic;  when  the 
commonplace  is  emphasized,  we  have  the  ludicrous, 
often  of  a  cynical  or  unfeeling  quality.  But  there 
is  a  humor  which  gives  us  the  pleasure  of  unexpected 
contrast  without  degrading  in  the  least  the  nobler 
element  in  the  comparison,  but  rather  intensifying 
it.  When  Emerson  bids  us  hitch  our  wagon  to  a 

107 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

star,  is  the  saying  humorous  or  sublime?  When 
Lamb  writes  to  Wordsworth,  "  God  tempers  the  wind 
to  the  shorn  Lambs,"  is  that  humorous  or  pathetic? 
In  truth  it  is  both;  for  humor  of  that  sort  is  fused 
with  our  noblest  and  deepest  feelings.  And  this  is 
the  humor  of  which  the  Elia  Essays  are  full;  in 
every  sense  a  good  humor  —  always  reverent,  al- 
ways gentle,  humane.  As  we  read  these  essays,  we 
feel  how  oddly  patched  a  stuff  is  this  human  life,  to 
be  sure ;  but  its  beauties  and  its  virtues  seem  all  the 
brighter  for  the  humorous  contrast  in  which  they  are 
set,  while  our  follies  and  vanities  provoke  a  kindly 
laughter  because  they  are  thrown  up  against  a  back- 
ground of  noble,  and  serious,  and  beautiful  things. 
Obviously,  then,  such  a  humor  should  imply  a 
quick  sensibility  for  whatsoever  things  are  noble, 
and  serious,  and  beautiful.  And  it  does.  You 
can  hardly  read  a  page  in  these  essays  without  find- 
ing proof  of  that.  Now  it  is  a  momentary  glimpse 
of  some  quiet  landscape,  usually  seen  through  the 
mellowing  light  of  memory,  as  the  Temple  gardens, 
or  the  grounds  of  the  old  Blakesware  mansion,  "the 
furry  wilderness,  the  haunt  of  the  squirrell  and  day- 
long murmuring  wood  pigeon,  with  that  antique 
image  in  the  centre,  god  or  goddess  I  knew  not." 
More  often,  if  it  be  description,  it  is  of  some  object 
consecrated  by  long  association  with  the  joys  and 
sorrows  of  men  and  calling  to  our  thought  some  great 
1 08 


CHARLES   LAMB 

complex  of  experience.  For  Lamb,  though  he  loved 
nature  well,  loved  men  better.  Unlike  his  friend 
Wordsworth,  who  hardly  seemed  to  care  for  men  un- 
less they  had  somehow  passed  under  the  solemniz- 
ing influence  of  mountain  and  sky>  Lamb  cared  little 
for  nature  unless  it  were  somehow  humanized  — 
unless,  if  I  may  say  so,  it  had  been  lived  in.  But 
he  did  feel  most  keenly  the  charm  of  all  those  places 
or  objects  about  which,  for  generations,  had  ebbed 
and  flowed  the  tides  of  human  life.  This  was  the 
secret  of  his  love  for  the  town.  There  any  ancient 
building  that  thrust  its  grimy  venerableness  upon  the 
crowded  street  might  suggest  that  Elian  contrast, 
half  humorous,  half  sad,  between  the  laughter  and 
loving,  the  scandal  and  striving  of  our  little  day,  and 
the  solemn  memory  of  all  the  yesterdays.  Take,  for 
example,  this  passage  on  the  sun-dials  in  the  Temple 
gardens :  — 

"What  an  antique  air  had  the  now  almost  effaced 
sun-dials,  with  their  moral  inscriptions,  seeming  co- 
evals with  that  Time  which  they  measured,  and  to 
take  their  revelations  of  its  flight  immediately  from 
heaven,  holding  correspondence  with  the  fountain 
of  light !  How  would  the  dark  line  steal  impercep- 
tibly on,  watched  by  the  eye  of  childhood,  eager  to 
detect  its  movement,  never  catched,  nice  as  an  evanes- 
cent cloud  or  the  first  arrests  of  sleep ! 
109 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

"  'Ah !  yet  doth  beauty  like  a  dial  hand 

Steal  from  his  figure,  and  no  pace  perceived!' 

What  a  dead  thing  is  a  clock,  with  its  ponderous 
embowelments  of  lead  and  brass,  its  pert  or  solemn 
dulness  of  communication,  compared  with  the  simple 
altar-like  structure  and  silent  heart-language  of  the 
old  dials !  It  stood  as  the  garden  god  of  Christian 
gardens.  Why  is  it  almost  everywhere  vanished? 
If  its  business  use  be  superseded  by  more  elaborate 
inventions,  its  moral  uses,  its  beauty,  might  have 
pleaded  for  its  continuance.  It  spoke  of  moderate 
labors,  of  pleasures  not  protracted  after  sunset,  of 
temperance,  and  good  hours.  It  was  the  primitive 
clock,  the  horologe  of  the  first  world.  Adam  could 
hardly  have  missed  it  in  Paradise.  It  was  the  meas- 
ure appropriate  for  sweet  plants  and  flowers  to  spring 
by,  for  the  birds  to  apportion  their  silver  warblings 
by,  for  flocks  to  be  led  to  fold  by.  The  shepherd 
'carved  it  out  quaintly  in  the  sun,'  and,  turning 
philosopher  by  the  very  occupation,  provided  it  with 
mottoes  more  touching  than  tombstones." 

What  placid  grace  of  rhythm,  what  quaint  felicity 
of  epithet !  And  what  constant  play  of  imagination, 
suggesting  comparisons  so  unexpected  and  yet  so 
apt  —  the  movement  of  the  shadow,  "nice  as  an 
evanescent  cloud  or  the  first  arrests  of  sleep !"  And 
how  the  thought  is  gently  beguiled  by  hints  of  sun- 
shine and  sweet  pastoral  toil,  to  that  first  garden  of 
no 


CHARLES   LAMB 

all,  when  the  moving  shadow  began  to  mark  the  his- 
tory of  man,  and  the  sun-dial  was  the  "  horologe  of 
the  first  world."  And  all  this  poetry  is  heightened 
by  humorous  contrast  with  the  modern  clock,  "  with 
its  ponderous  embowelments  of  lead  and  brass,  and 
its  pert  or  solemn  dulness  of  communication." 

Every  one  has  noticed  how  rich  is  Lamb's  writing 
in  allusion^  His  memory  was  stored  with  the  best 
things  in  literature  and  tradition,  — imagery,  jsenti- 
ment,  and  action,  —  in  the  choicest  phrase  of  the  mas- 
ters. All  this  treasure  was  at  the  service  of  his 
humor,  to  illustrate  the  odd  contrast  between  the 
threadbare  poverty  of  real  life  and  the  boundless 
wealth  of  imagination.  For  in  Lamb's  allusions 
the  homely  commonplace  is  usually  confronted  with 
some  fancy,  fair  or  bold ;  the  hard  reality  with  some 
ideal  beauty.  The  steward  who  bustles  about  on 
the  old  Margate  hoy  is  like  Ariel,  "  flaming  at  once 
about  all  parts  of  the  deck" ;  the  burly  cripple  with- 
out legs  who  wheels  himself  about  the  streets  in  a 
go-cart  is  "  a  grand  fragment,  as  good  as  an  Elgin 
marble";  when  the  sooty-faced  chimney-sweep's 
grin  discloses  his  double  row  of  white  teeth,  Lamb 

quotes :  — 

"a  sable  cloud 
Turns  forth  her  silver  lining  on  the  night." 

But  Lamb's  richness  of  allusion  is  not  best  exempli- 
fied by  images  like  these,  detached  from  their  setting. 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

It  is  seen  rather  in  quick  turns  of  humorous  phrase, 
in  a  single  word  of  quotation,  in  sudden  glimpses  and 
reflections  of  his  reading,  so  fleeting  that  we  can  hardly 
identify  them,  yet  casting  a  constant  glimmer  of 
humor  over  the  homely  facts  out  of  which  the  essay 
is  woven.  In  all  such  allusions  the  effect  is  not  to 
degrade  the  loftier  element  in  the  comparison,  but 
to  beautify  the  lower.  This  is  the  humor,  not  of  the 
cynic,  but  of  the  poet.  It  discloses  sudden,  unfore- 
seen relations  between  the  highest  and  the  humblest 
things;  it  makes  us  feel  "how  near  is  grandeur  to 
our  dust." 

Lamb's  literary  style  is  unique.  If  style  be  meas- 
ured by  the  faithfulness  with  which  it  reveals  the  per- 
sonality of  the  writer,  then  Lamb's  must  be  nearly 
perfect.  To  attempt  any  imitation  of  it  would  be 
to  fall  into  intolerable  preciosity.  In  force  and  com- 
pass, of  course,  he  is  not  to  be  ranked  with  the  great- 
est men ;  but  nobody's  work  is  more  exquisite.  To 
use  a  phrase  more  commonly  applied  to  painters, 
I  should  call  Lamb  one  of  the  Little  Masters.  His 
diction  is  a  study  in  verbal  values.  He  had  a  nice 
sense  of  the  significance  of  words,  the  aroma  of  asso- 
ciation. He  loved  to  elaborate  a  statement  slowly, 
lingering  over  its  details  and  tasting  the  flavor  of 
every  phrase  with  deliberate  relish.  But  the  charm 
of  his  style  is  due  most  of  all  to.  the  constant  presence 
of  his  imagination.  His  thought  is  always  concret- 

112 


CHARLES   LAMB 

ing  itself  in  illustration  or  example,  and  in  almost 
every  line  blossoms  into  some  rare  or  graceful  fancy. 
It  is  so  spontaneous  that  the  reader  hardly  appreciates 
its  richness ;  but  in  reality  —  if  the  homely  phrase 
may  be  pardoned  —  there  is  more  imagination  to  the 
square  inch  in  Lamb's  writing  than  in  almost  any 
other  modern  prose. 

The  archaic  cast  of  his  style  is  due,  of  course,  to  the 
influence  of  his  favorite  seventeenth-century  men, 
especially  Fuller  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne.  Not  that 
he  slavishly  copied  these  men,  or  even  consciously 
imitated  them;  but  he  had  steeped  himself  in  their 
writing  till  their  manner  became  second  nature. 
In  the  preface  to  the  Last  Essays  of  Elia,  he  says, 
"  The  essays  of  the  late  Elia  were  villainously  pranked 
in  an  affected  array  of  antique  words  and  phrases, 
but  they  had  not  been  his  if  they  had  been  other  than 
such ;  and  better  it  is  that  a  writer  should  be  natural 
in  a  self-pleasing  quaintness  than  to  affect  a  natural- 
ness (so-called)  that  should  be  strange  to  him." 

In  fact,  this  "  self  -pleasing  quaintness "  never  does 
seem  affected.  Sometimes  it  gives  to  a  passage  an 
old-fashioned  daintiness  of  manner,  as  of  something 
laid  in  lavender:  — 

"  What  a  place  to  be  in  is  an  old  library !    It  seems 
as  though  all  the  souls  of  all  the  writers  that  have 
bequeathed  their   labors   to   these  Bodleians,  were 
i  113 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

reposing  here,  as  in  some  dormitory,  or  middle  state. 
I  do  not  want  to  handle,  to  profane  the  leaves,  their 
winding  sheets.  I  could  as  soon  dislodge  a  shade. 
I  seem  to  inhale  learning,  walking  amid  their  foliage ; 
and  the  odor  of  their  old  moth-scented  coverings  is 
fragrant  as  the  first  bloom  of  those  sciential  apples 
which  grew  amid  the  happy  orchard." 

But  more  often  this  seventeenth-century  manner 
serves  to  emphasize  that  contrast  between  the  stately 
and  the  familiar  upon  which,  as  we  have  said,  so 
much  of  Lamb's  humor  depends.  As  a  rule,  no  form 
of  pleasantry  is  more  inane  than  the  attempt  to  apply 
big  words  to  small  things.  But  Lamb's  writing  sel- 
dom degenerates  into  this  form  of  feeble  burlesque. 
His  large  utterance  seems  not  only  natural  to  him,  but 
in  some  way  fitting  to  his  theme.  There  are  passages 
in  the  essays  that,  so  far  as  style  is  concerned,  might 
have  been  taken  bodily  out  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne's 
Religio  Medici  or  Urn  Burial;  yet  their  antique 
dignity  of  manner  seems  not  misapplied.  Take,  for 
example,  some  sentences  from  A  Quakers'  Meeting : — 

"Dost  thou  love  silence  deep  as  that  *  before  the 
winds  were  made'?  go  not  out  into  the  wilderness, 
descend  not  into  the  profundities  of  the  earth ;  shut 
not  up  thy  casements;  nor  pour  wax  into  the  little 
cells  of  thy  ears,  with  little-faith'd,  self-mistrusting 
Ulysses.  —  Retire  with  me  into  a  Quakers'  Meeting. 

114 


CHARLES   LAMB 

"  For  a  man  to  refrain  even  from  good  words,  and 
to  hold  his  peace,  it  is  commendable;  but  for  a 
multitude,  it  is  a  great  mastery. 

"  What  is  the  stillness  of  the  desert  compared  with 
this  place?  what  the  uncommunicating  muteness  of 
fishes?  —  here  the  goddess  reigns  and  revels. — 
'  Boreas,  and  Cesias  and  Argestes  loud/  do  not  with 
their  interconfounding  uproars  more  augment  the 
brawl  —  nor  the  waves  of  the  blown  Baltic  with  their 
clubbed  sounds  —  than  their  opposite  (Silence  her 
sacred  self)  is  multiplied  and  rendered  more  intense 
by  numbers  and  by  sympathy.  She  too  hath  her 
deeps  that  call  unto  deeps.  Negation  itself  hath  a 
positive  more  and  less;  and  closed  eyes  would  seem 
to  obscure  the  great  obscurity  of  midnight. 

"To  pace  alone  in  the  cloisters  or  side  aisles  of 
some  cathedral,  time  stricken  ; 

"  l  Or  under  hanging  mountains, 
Or  by  the  fall  of  fountains;' 

is  but  a  vulgar  luxury  compared  with  that  which  those 
enjoy  who  come  together  for  the  purposes  of  more 
complete,  abstracted  solitude.  This  is  the  loneli- 
ness 'to  be  felt.'— The  Abbey  Church  of  West- 
minster hath  nothing  so  solemn,  so  spirit-soothing, 
as  the  naked  walls  and  benches  of  a  Quakers'  Meet- 
ing. Here  are  no  tombs,  no  inscriptions, 

"'.  .  .  Sands,  ignoble  things, 
Dropt  from  the  ruined  sides  of  kings'  — 

"5 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

but  here  is  something  which  throws  Antiquity  her- 
self into  the  foreground  —  SILENCE  —  eldest  of 
things  —  language  of  old  Night  —  primitive  dis- 
courser  —  to  which  the  insolent  decays  of  moulder- 
ing grandeur  have  but  arrived  by  a  violent,  and,  as 
we  may  say,  unnatural  progression." 

In  such  a  passage  as  this  there  is  far  more  than  the 
half-humorous  adaptation  of  a  stately  and  antiquated 
manner.  This  writing,  though  so  rich  with  rhetoric 
that,  like  some  gorgeous  stuffs,  it  will  almost  stand 
alone,  is  cumbered  with  no  idle  verbiage.  Every 
epithet  is  a  flash  of  imagination.  That  conceit  of 
silence  as  intensified  by  numbers  is  worthy  of  the 
subtle  Dr.  John  Donne;  and  some  of  the  phrases 
are  fairly  startling  in  their  vivid  boldness.  "The 
insolent  decays  of  mouldering  grandeur  "  —  I  wonder 
how  many  prose-writers  of  the  last  two  centuries 
could  have  hit  upon  that !  To  pile  together  super- 
annuated diction  in  involved  structure  is  easy  enough ; 
but  to  write  a  passage  like  that,  in  the  ampler  manner 
of  our  elder  masters,  and  yet  natural  and  unstrained, 
of  imagination  all  compact,  informed  with  grave  and 
quiet  feeling  and  yet  played  about  with  lambent  lights 
of  humor  —  this  is  not  easy.  Who  else  besides  Lamb 
in  the  last  century  and  a  half  has  been  able  to  do  any- 
thing like  it?  But  then,  who  has  been  able  to  do 
anything  that  Lamb  did? 

116 


CHARLES  LAMB 

For  one  comes  back  to  the  statement  that  thejcharm 
of  Lamb's  work  and  character  is  unique.  It  eludes 
analysis.  And  the  better  one  knows  him,  the  more 
impossible  does  it  seem  to  put  into  words  any  ade- 
quate likeness  of  the  man.  His  humor,  his  tender- 
ness, his  imagination,  his  sense  of  beauty,  and  his 
sense  of  oddity,  —  they  were  all  peculiar  in  quality 
and  more  subtly  combined  than  in  ordinary  men. 

Only  once  or  twice  —  perhaps  only  once,  in  that 
most  intimate  of  all  his  essays,  the  Dream  Children 
—  does  Lamb  drop  all  affectations  and  tell  us  the 
things  that  lay  nearest  his  heart  in  language  too 
utterly  sincere  even  for  the  disguise  of  his  "self- 
pleasing  quaintness."  In  that  perfect  essay  humor 
is  quite  lost  in  pathos ;  and  the  English  in  which  the 
simple  story  is  told,  for  purity  of  idiom,  chaste  sim- 
plicity, and  artless  grace  of  movement,  is  quite  un- 
surpassed. No  one  else  in  Lamb's  day  wrote  such 
English,  and  to  find  anything  so  perfect  you  will 
have  to  go  back  to  the  best  passages  of  the  English 
Bible.  Here  Lamb  has  set  up  a  glass  where  we  may 
see  the  inmost  part  of  him. 


117 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY 
I 

ONE  October  afternoon  in  1807  a  post-chaise  was 
crawling  slowly  up  the  long  hill  that  separates  the 
vale  of  Rydal  from  the  vale  of  Grasmere  in  the  Eng- 
lish Lake  District.  In  the  post-chaise  sat  a  lady  and 
her  little  daughter.  Her  two  boys,  of  seven  and 
nine,  impatient  of  the  slow  ascent  had  alighted,  gone 
on  over  the  brow  of  the  hill,  and  were  briskly  running 
down  the  other  side  toward  the  Grasmere  Valley. 
Behind  them  followed  as  fast  as  he  might  a  short, 
frail,  little  man,  who  looked  himself  at  first  glance 
to  be  a  boy,  but  whose  face,  already  beginning  to  be 
seamed  with  thought,  showed  him  to  be  past  his  first 
youth.  The  three  had  reached  the  foot  of  the  hill, 
when  a  sharp  turn  in  the  road  suddenly  disclosed  to 
their  view  a  little  white  cottage,  roses  and  jasmine 
clambering  about  its  windows,  and  two  dark  yew 
trees  throwing  a  protecting  shadow  over  its  wall. 
At  sight  of  this  cottage  the  young  man  stopped  in- 
stantly, hesitated,  as  if  about  to  turn  back;  but  as 
the  boys  ran  in  at  the  cottage  gate,  he,  too,  as  if  by  a 
118 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

sudden  impulse  of  desire  that  overcame  his  shyness, 
pushed  in  after  them.  Just  at  that  moment  the  post- 
chaise  pulled  up  at  the  gate,  and  a  tall,  grave-look- 
ing man  with  two  ladies  hurried  out  from  the  cottage 
door  to  meet  it.  Our  shy  but  eager  young  man, 
who  is  evidently  a  stranger  to  these  cottage  folk, 
and  for  the  moment  hardly  noticed  by  them,  in  their 
haste  to  greet  the  lady  of  the  post-chaise,  steps  mod- 
estly into  the  tiny  porch  of  the  cottage  and  awaits 
his  welcome  as  the  whole  party  comes  in. 

This  young  man,  of  course,  is  Thomas  De  Quincey, 
travelling  to  Keswick  as  an  escort  for  Mrs.  Coleridge 
and  her  children ;  he  is  meeting  for  the  first  time,  and 
with  trembling  reverence,  the  great  Mr.  William 
Wordsworth.  A  year  before  he  had  come  up  to 
the  Lake  District  with  intent  to  call  upon  the  poet, 
and  had  got  a  glimpse  of  the  white  cottage  from  the 
slope  of  Hammerscar  across  the  lake ;  but  had  turned 
back,  afraid  to  enter  the  presence  of  the  god  of  his 
idolatry.  But  now  he  is  in  the  cottage  with  him, 
taking  tea  by  his  humble  fireside,  not  as  with  one  to 
be  feared,  but  —  to  use  his  own  phrase  —  as  with 
Raphael  the  affable  angel,  on  the  terms  of  man  with 
man. 

This  meeting  with  Wordsworth  was  a  turning- 
point  in  the  career  of  Thomas  De  Quincey.  He 
himself  averred  that  it  was  marked  by  a  change  even 
in  the  physical  condition  of  his  nervous  system.  The 
119 


A   GROUP    OF    ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

restless  desire,  the  morbid  self -consciousness  and  self- 
distrust,  the  disheartening  sense  of  distance  between 
him  and  his  ideals,  —  all  this  vanished  in  an  hour 
before  the  homely  hospitality  of  William  Wordsworth. 
It  was  reassuring  to  find  that  the  greatest  man  of 
the  time  —  for  such  he  thought  Wordsworth  —  was 
the  simplest,  content  in  his  retirement  among  the 
hills,  and  careless  of  the  loud  noises  of  fame.  But 
whatever  influence  this  meeting  may  have  had  upon 
the  mental  development  of  De  Quincey,  it  certainly 
may  be  considered  as  the  beginning  of  a  new  period 
in  the  outward  history  of  his  life.  Up  to  this  time 
he  has  been  a  sort  of  vagrant,  without  fixed  place  of 
residence,  without  any  definite  purpose,  without  any 
congenial  friends.  Coleridge  he  had  met  a  few  weeks 
before  this  visit  to  Grasmere;  now  he  has  met 
Wordsworth ;  three  days  later  he  is  to  meet  Southey ; 
a  few  months  later  he  will  meet  John  Wilson.  These 
men,  in  spite  of  differences  and  temporary  estrange- 
ments inevitable  with  such  a  temperament  as  his, 
remained  his  best,  almost  his  only,  friends  for  more 
than  half  his  lifetime.  The  next  summer  he  visited 
Wordsworth  again;  and  when,  in  1809,  Wordsworth 
left  this  little  cottage,  he  took  it,  and  called  it  his  home 
for  more  than  twenty  years.  Hither,  after  some  six 
years  of  bachelor  life,  he  brought  a  wife  from  a  farm- 
house at  Rydal  Water  a  mile  away ;  here  his  children 
were  born.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the 

120 


THOMAS    DE   QUINCEY 

direction  of  all  his  later  life  was  determined  by  this 
visit  to  Wordsworth. 

It  is  not  easy,  however,  to  trace  with  accuracy  his 
doings  or  his  whereabouts,  either  before  or  after  that 
event.  Some  early  passages  in  his  life  he  himself 
described  with  great  detail  in  those  sketches  after- 
wards pieced  together  for  the  Autobiography.  But 
the  Autobiography  is  no  connected  narrative.  It  is 
rather  a  series  of  pictures  of  some  moments  in  which 
the  life  of  long  periods  seemed  focussed,  incidents 
in  which  his  personality  was  revealed  to  himself,  or 
the  sadness  and  wonder  of  the  world  struck  in  upon 
his  soul.  The  incidents,  moreover,  are  related  as  they 
stood  in  his  memory  years  after  they  occurred,  when 
his  morbidly  heightened  fancy  had  doubtless  envel- 
oped them  with  circumstance  unnoticed  at  the  time 
or  altogether  imaginary.  When  all  his  life  had  passed 
into  the  atmosphere  of  dream,  he  never  could  quite 
tell  how  much  of  it  was  fact  and  how  much  was  only 
dream. 

The  one  significant  fact  that  seems  clear  from  these 
records  is  that  De  Quincey  and  all  his  brothers  and 
sisters  were  precocious  young  folk,  with  a  certain 
wayward  intensity  of  imagination.  Two  of  his 
sisters  died  in  early  childhood,  both  from  some 
affection  of  the  brain.  His  eldest  brother,  who  died 
in  young  manhood,  was  a  singularly  brilliant  boy, 
who  lived  for  years  most  of  the  time  in  a  realm  of 

121 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

romance  of  his  own  creation,  and  had  strength  of  will 
enough  to  make  his  brothers  live  there,  too.  The 
younger  brother,  Pink,  ran  away  to  sea  in  his  teens, 
was  captured  by  pirates,  recaptured,  served  in  the 
navy,  and  in  a  dozen  years  passed  through  a  series 
of  adventures  wild  enough  for  a  Stevenson  romance. 
Whence  they  got  this  strain  in  their  blood  it  might 
be  hard  to  say ;  for  their  father  was  a  well-to-do  mer- 
chant of  Manchester,  prosaic  enough,  for  all  that 
appears,  both  in  character  and  pursuits.  Thomas 
De  Quincey  at  thirteen  years  of  age,  —  if  we  may 
take  his  word  for  it,  —  could  read  Greek  with  ease, 
and  at  fifteen  not  only  wrote  lyric  Greek  verse,  but 
conversed  in  Greek  fluently,  and  was  in  the  habit  of 
reading  off  the  daily  newspaper  into  that  language  — 
a  process  that  must  have  racked  the  Greek  consider- 
ably. "That  boy,"  said  one  of  his  masters,  "could 
harangue  an  Athenian  mob  better  than  you  or  I 
could  address  an  English  one."  His  father  had  died 
when  De  Quincey  was  only  seven  years  of  age,  and 
the  boy  was  kept  in  school  by  his  guardians,  under 
an  uncongenial  master,  after  he  should  have  been  at 
the  University.  He  ran  away,  and  as  he  flatly  re- 
fused to  go  back,  his  mother  gave  him  a  guinea  a 
week  and  let  him  wander  wherever  he  would.  He 
drifted  about  for  some  months  in  Wales,  living  in 
farmhouses,  and  astonishing  the  good  folk  by  his 
courtesy  and  his  erudition ;  and  towards  winter  made 

122 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

his  way  up  to  London.  His  adventures  here :  how 
he  slept  starving  and  shivering  in  a  Greek  Street 
garret,  how  he  roamed  the  city  with  Anne  of  Oxford 
Street  and  fainted  of  cold  and  hunger  in  Soho  Square, 
how  he  was  helped  by  the  good  Jews  at  the  rate  of 
eighteen  per  cent,  and  at  last  by  some  fortunate 
accident  —  he  never  told  what  —  he  was  discovered, 
restored  to  his  friends,  and  sent  up  to  Oxford  where 
he  belonged,  — all  this  will  be  remembered  by  every- 
body, for  everybody  has  read  the  Confessions.  Yet 
the  story  raises  some  doubts.  Without  question  it  is 
true  in  outline ;  but  I  think  it  must  be  embroidered  a 
little.  This  romantic  tramping  in  Wales  with  his 
mother's  consent  and  a  guinea  a  week;  all  this 
vagabondage  and  starvation  in  London  when  there 
was  bread  enough  and  to  spare  in  his  mother's  house, 
—  it  seems  too  much  to  believe  of  a  rational  mother 
or  a  rational  son.  I  suspect  the  laudanum  has  got 
into  the  story. 

He  entered  Worcester  College,  Oxford,  in  1803, 
and  he  was  there  through  1808;  but  he  couldn't 
have  kept  his  terms  regularly  in  the  latter  year,  and 
seems  not  to  have  been  in  residence  much  after  the 
summer  of  1807.  He  formed  no  intimacies  in 
college,  lived  much  by  himself,  and  as,  from  some 
freak  or  other,  he  refused  to  stand  his  final  examina- 
tions, he  never  took  a  degree.  But  he  seems  to  have 
read  a  good  deal  in  literature  and  philosophy;  and 
123 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

he  was  one  of  the  few  young  men  who  hailed  with 
genuine  appreciation  the  early  work  of  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth. 

In  1809  he  took  up  his  residence  in  the  Lake 
District,  occupying  the  little  Grasmere  cottage  that 
Wordsworth  was  then  vacating;  but  what  he  was 
doing  there  for  the  next  twelve  years  nobody  knows. 
He  had  adopted  no  profession.  He  wrote  no  books 
or  reviews,  and  seemed  to  have  no  clear  vocation 
to  literature.  No  one  knew  or  saw  much  of  him. 
He  says  himself  that  he  was  reading  German  meta- 
physics and  taking  opium.  Both  habits  he  had 
acquired  while  in  the  University;  both  accorded 
well  with  his  dreamy,  isolated  temper ;  both  he  kept 
up  during  life.  In  1819,  urged  by  the  needs  of  an 
increasing  family,  he  became  editor  of  a  local  news- 
paper in  Kendal;  German  metaphysics  and  Tory 
politics,  however,  made  a  mixture  not  relished  by  his 
rural  readers,  and  after  some  months  he  gave  up 
that  project.  But  two  years  later,  in  1821,  appeared 
in  the  London  Magazine  the  Confessions  of  an 
Opium-Eater,  and  De  Quincey's  literary  career  was 
begun.  For  the  next  four  years  he  was  much  in 
London,  preparing  for  the  London  Magazine  a  series 
of  some  dozen  papers  continuing  and  supplementing 
the  Confessions.  By  1826  he  got  the  ear  of  the  pub- 
lic and  was  a  coveted  contributor. 

After  about  this  time,  however,  his  interests  drew 
124 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

him  away  from  London  to  Edinburgh.  For  more 
than  ten  years  his  closest  friend  among  his  neighbors 
in  the  Lake  District  had  been,  not  Wordsworth, 
for  whom  his  early  reverence  had  now  somewhat 
abated,  but  John  Wilson  of  Elleray.  Wilson 
was  now  at  the  height  of  his  popularity  as  editor  of 
BlackwootTs  Magazine,  and  had  already  once  or 
twice  ventured  to  introduce  the  Opium-Eater  as  a 
character  into  his  famous  Nodes  Ambrosianae.  He 
now  persuaded  his  friend  to  lend  his  pen  to  the  ser- 
vice of  Blackwood,  and  after  1826  De  Quincey  became 
a  frequent  contributor  to  that  brilliant  periodical. 
In  1834  Tail's  Magazine  was  set  up  in  Edinburgh; 
it  was  for  these  two  journals,  Blackwood  and  Tait, 
that  most  of  De  Quincey's  work  was  done  for  the 
rest  of  his  life.  In  1830  he  removed  his  family  to 
lodgings  in  Edinburgh;  and  in  1837,  after  the  death 
of  his  wife,  took  a  cottage  at  Lasswade,  a  little  way 
out  of  the  city,  which  was  his  home  —  or  at  all 
events  the  home  of  his  children  —  so  long  as  he 
lived.  For  himself  he  preferred  to  do  his  writing 
in  hired  rooms  in  town,  near  his  publishers;  and  it 
is  part  of  the  De  Quincey  legend  that  he  used  to  occupy 
a  room  until  it  was  entirely  "  snowed  up"  with  papers 
and  manuscripts  which  he  despaired  of  arranging 
and  yet  would  not  destroy,  when  he  would  back  out 
and  hire  another  room,  only  to  be  pushed  out  of 
this  again  by  the  ever  accumulating  mass  of  papers. 

I2S 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

What  seems  certain  is  that  he  must  have  produced 
a  vastly  greater  amount  of  manuscript  than  he  ever 
got  printed;  had  he  published  all  he  wrote,  the 
array  of  his  works  might  have  been  something  appall- 
ing. In  his  later  days  he  was  one  of  the  celebrities 
of  Edinburgh;  but  it  was  difficult  to  get  sight  of 
him ;  for  he  refused  most  of  the  conventions  of  society 
and  usually  had  to  be  found,  if  found  at  all,  buried 
in  some  of  his  bookish  retreats.  He  kept  on  writing 
to  the  end ;  but  the  last  years  of  his  life  were  mostly 
spent  in  garnering  up  his  scattered  papers  from  the 
magazines,  revising  and  arranging  them  for  a  col- 
lected edition  of  his  works.  In  spite  of  the  ill-health 
by  which  he  had  always  been  harassed,  in  spite  of 
his  life-long  opium  habit,  —  or  possibly  because  of 
it,  —  the  fragile  little  man  outlived  all  his  early 
friends,  and  died  in  1859,  at  the  good  old  age  of 
seventy-four. 

II 

After  all  no  one  seems  to  know  much  of  De  Quincey; 
no  one  ever  did  know  much  of  him.  When  you 
have  read  all  his  own  Confessions,  you  feel  he  has 
told  you  little  of  himself,  of  his  pursuits,  his  practical 
outward  life,  still  less  of  his  affections,  his  inner 
life.  A  very  considerable  body  of  reminiscence 
from  his  contemporaries  has,  indeed,  gathered  about 
his  memory,  and  some  thirty  years  ago  Mr.  Japp  — 

126 


THOMAS   DE  QUINCEY 

or,  as  for  some  unknown  reason  he  preferred  to  call 
himself,  Mr.  Page  —  wrote  his  life  in  two  stout 
volumes;  yet  all  the  letters  and  the  stories  leave 
us  with  the  feeling  that  we  have  not  really  got  inside 
that  strange  personality.  The  truth  is  there  seems 
something  demonic,  almost  spectral,  about  De 
Quincey.  He  wasn't  one  of  your  men  of  large  red 
health,  who  stand  solidly  on  the  ground,  and  love 
the  broad  plain  facts  of  life.  He  lived  in  the  Gras- 
mere  cottage  twenty  years;  but  he  formed  few 
acquaintances  and  left  few  memories  there.  Of  all 
his  Grasmere  neighbors,  Dorothy  Wordsworth, 
who  had  that  gift  for  appreciating  genius  which 
is  itself  a  form  of  genius,  always  understood  him 
best,  and  her  sympathy  and  judgment  several  times 
stood  him  in  good  stead.  People  of  plain  com- 
mon sense  naturally  found  him  difficult.  Harriet 
Martineau,  —  a  very  large  incarnation  of  common 
sense,  —  who  lived  near  him  for  years,  declared  that 
his  absorption  and  selfish  moodiness  had  rendered 
him  quite  insensible  to  the  ordinary  requisites  of 
honor  and  courtesy,  to  say  nothing  of  gratitude 
and  sincerity.  But  Harriet  Martineau  was  herself 
rather  difficult.  In  those  years  of  the  Grasmere  resi- 
dence he  was  generally  invisible;  for  he  preferred 
to  read  and  dream  indoors  by  day,  and  come  forth 
to  walk  by  night.  Many  a  night,  past  midnight, 
when  all  the  valley  was  hushed  in  slumber  and 
127 


A    GROUP    OF    ENGLISH    ESSAYISTS 

lights  had  ceased  to  twinkle  in  the  cottages,  his 
little  form  might  have  been  made  out,  flitting  like 
some  darker  shadow  up  the  hillside,  over  the 
fells,  or  resting  in  some  secluded  nook  by  the 
Rothay. 

Neither  in  his  own  house  or  anywhere  else  did 
the  ordinary  conventions  of  society  ever  get  much 
hold  on  him.  At  the  call  of  some  chance  thought, 
his  daughter  says,  he  might  interrupt  the  process 
of  dressing  himself  in  the  morning,  and  forget  alto- 
gether to  resume  it,  perhaps  receiving  a  visitor  later 
in  the  day  without  his  coat  or  wearing  half  the 
proper  number  of  stockings.  Going  to  call  on 
Professor  Wilson  in  Gloucester  Place,  Edinburgh, 
one  stormy  evening,  he  decided  to  remain  over 
night,  and  literally  stayed  a  year.  During  all 
this  visit,  Wilson  says,  he  lived  in  a  kind  of  mysterious 
seclusion,  spending  most  of  his  days  locked  in  his 
room,  stretched  on  the  floor  before  the  fire,  and 
was  only  seen  when  toward  midnight  he  stole  out  of 
doors  for  a  long  walk.  If  he  could  be  captured  at  a 
late  dinner  lasting  till  two  or  three  in  the  morning, 
he  would  sometimes  pour  forth  a  stream  of  talk  that 
entranced  all  his  hearers.  As  a  rule,  however, 
he  refused  to  take  his  meals  with  others;  and 
Wilson's  servants  used  to  place  food  outside  the 
door  of  his  room,  leaving  him  to  take  it  when  he 
liked,  and  often  finding  it  twelve  hours  later  un- 

128 


THOMAS    DE   QUINCEY 

touched.  Later  on,  in  1843,  Wilson  declared  that, 
though  he  supposed  himself  to  be  the  most  intimate 
friend  of  De  Quincey,  and  the  De  Quincey  family, 
then  living  at  Lasswade,  frequently  sent  to  him  for 
news  of  their  father,  yet  he  had  seen  him  not  above 
four  times  in  six  years.  Even  his  own  family,  it  is 
clear,  always  deemed  him  an  odd  creature. 

This  peculiar  abstracted  temper  was  aggravated, 
doubtless,  by  the  opium  habit;  but  it  was  not  en- 
gendered by  opium.  De  Quincey  was  born  with 
eyes  that  open  inwards.  He  lived  in  a  world  of 
his  own  —  a  world  of  dream  and  speculation.  Not 
that  he  was  altogether  without  interest  in  outward 
affairs,  social,  economic,  or  political;  but  he  was 
unable  to  take  the  obvious  and  practical  view  of 
them.  With  an  almost  preternatural  gift  to  discover 
subtlety  or  paradox,  he  was  as  helpless  as  a  child 
before  the  simplest  business  difficulty.  He  wan- 
dered half  over  Edinburgh  one  evening  trying  to 
negotiate  a  personal  loan  for  seven  shillings  sixpence, 
and  offering  as  security  a  fifty-pound  bank-note; 
at  the  same  time  he  was  writing  a  treatise  on  the 
Logic  of  the  Laws  of  Wealth.  In  this  isolation  and 
self-absorption  there  was  nothing  of  cynicism  or 
misanthropy.  On  the  contrary,  there  often  seemed 
to  be  in  his  manner  a  kind  of  timid  appeal  for 
human  sympathy  and  companionship.  He  left 
upon  you  the  impression  of  a  man  "moving  about 
K  129 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

in  worlds  not  realized."  He  had  a  soft  and  dep- 
recating tone  in  his  voice  and  a  gentle  but  elaborate 
courtesy  which  he  extended  to  everybody  alike. 
Professor  Wilson's  daughter  says  that  when  he  was 
staying  in  their  house,  he  would  inform  the  cook  with 
a  stately  deference,  as  if  he  had  taken  her  for  a 
duchess,  that  "owing  to  dyspepsia  affecting  my 
system,  and  the  possibility  of  any  additional  derange- 
ment of  the  stomach  taking  place,  consequences 
incalculably  distressing  would  arise,  so  much  so 
indeed  as  to  increase  nervous  irritation,  and  pre- 
vent me  from  attending  to  matters  of  overwhelm- 
ing importance,  if  you  do  not  remember  to  cut 
the  mutton  in  a  diagonal  rather  than  in  a  longitu- 
dinal form." 

But  with  a  friend,  or  even  with  a  comparative 
stranger  whom  he  had  reason  to  think  thoroughly 
sympathetic,  De  Quincey  could  come  out  of  his  with- 
drawn and  silent  mood,  and  be  a  most  delightful 
companion.  No  subject  could  be  started  in  conver- 
sation that  would  not  soon  touch  some  topic  in 
which  he  felt  an  interest ;  then  a  flush  would  spread 
itself  over  the  withered  little  face,  the  eyelids  would 
lift,  slowly  and  as  with  an  effort,  disclosing  a  pair  of 
wonderful,  immortal  eyes,  the  feeble  mouth  would 
tremble  and  twitch  for  an  instant,  and  then  his  talk 
would  begin.  Low-voiced,  deliberate,  as  if  far  away, 
eddying  hither  and  thither,  circling  about  all  sorts 

130 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

of  topics  yet  never  quite  losing  its  way,  monotonous 
in  tone  always,  but  in  matter  varied,  brilliant,  elo- 
quent, full  of  ingenious  reflection,  curious  fact, 
striking  paradox,  flavored  with  bits  of  caustic  satire 
or  gossip,  shot  through  with  strange  lights  of  fancy. 
"What  wouldn't  one  give,"  said  Mrs.  Carlyle,  when 
first  she  saw  him  in  an  evening  company,  "what 
wouldn't  one  give  to  have  that  little  man  in  a  box 
and  take  him  out  now  and  then  to  talk?"  Every- 
body that  ever  met  him  intimately,  —  Tom  Hood, 
Professor  Wilson,  Harriet  Martineau,  Hill  Burton, 
Professor  Masson,  Mr.  Fields,  Mr.  Gillies,  and  half 
a  score  of  other  people,  —  they  all  testify  to  that 
marvellous  stream  of  talk.  But,  curious  to  say,  so 
far  as  I  can  discover,  not  one  of  them  ever  remem- 
bered a  dozen  words  of  what  he  said.  They  descant 
upon  the  fluency,  the  music,  the  subtlety,  the  learn- 
ing of  his  talk;  but  what,  on  any  given  occasion, 
Mr.  De  Quincey  was  actually  talking  about,  nobody 
seems  to  have  recorded.  In  truth  it  probably  didn't 
much  matter.  Evidently  it  was  the  extraordinary 
brilliancy  of  the  exercise  that  fascinated  his  hearers, 
rather  than  any  definite  body  of  opinion.  It  wasn't 
talk  like  Johnson's,  made  up  of  stout,  well-shaped 
propositions  to  be  defended  against  all  disputants, 
but  rather  a  winding  stream  of  speculation  and  rhet- 
oric, sweeping  its  long  curves  through  the  borders 
of  a  dim  land  of  dreams. 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

III 

Now  all  of  De  Quincey's  literary  work  is  just  this 
talk  put  into  print.  He  wrote  easily  —  too  easily ; 
it  was  his  mode  of  talking  to  himself,  and  those 
mounds  of  manuscript  that  filled,  one  after  another, 
the  dens  in  Edinburgh  where  he  spent  his  days  were 
only  other  masses  of  talk  that  did  not  get  into  print. 
As  you  open  his  book  you  hear  the  man  going  on 
with  his  monologue.  There  on  the  printed  page  is  the 
curious  combination  of  volubility  and  precision,  the 
garrulity,  the  discursiveness,  the  love  of  paradox, 
the  indifference  to  the  obvious  and  the  vision  for 
the  remote,  the  labored  humor,  —  all  those  qualities 
that,  they  tell  us,  used  to  mark  his  conversation. 
Of  him  it  may  be  said  in  a  very  special  sense  that 
he  being  dead  yet  speaketh.  And  herein  is  the  best 
assurance  for  the  permanence  of  his  work.  Any  writ- 
ing that  can  preserve  for  us  in  such  vivid  complete- 
ness the  personality  of  a  man  is  sure  to  live;  certainly 
if  that  personality  be  so  interesting  as  De  Quincey's. 

On  the  other  hand,  writing  like  this  has  some  very 
obvious  and  very  serious  defects;  so  serious  as  to 
make  it  doubtful  whether  most  of  De  Quincey's 
work  can  ever  rank  very  high  as  literature.  The  truth 
is  that  talk,  however  wonderful,  is  not  exactly  lit- 
erature; it  needs  first  to  be  composed.  But  De 
Quincey  never  really  composed  anything.  There  is 

132 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

no  method  in  his  work,  no  clear  foresight  of  the  end 
from  the  beginning,  nothing  final  and  finished.  With 
all  his  learning  and  subtlety  he  never  wrote  anything 
to  be  properly  called  a  treatise,  though  he  planned 
several.  His  essays,  critical  or  historical,  are  full 
of  curious  fact  and  conjecture,  personal  speculation 
and  personal  reminiscence,  ranging  from  Dan  to 
Beersheba,  but  they  are  seldom  or  never  the  clear, 
well-arranged  presentation  of  the  subjects  they  pro- 
fess to  discuss.  He  gives  a  variety  of  incidental 
suggestion,  frequent  illuminating  glimpses  of  the 
recondite  relations  of  his  theme;  but  he  fails  in  the 
humbler,  though  more  important,  task  of  giving 
to  his  subject  ordered  and  unified  treatment.  In 
fact,  he  never  was  a  direct  or  systematic  thinker. 
His  mental  habits  were  so  discursive  that,  although 
he  had  great  penetration,  he  was  nevertheless  always 
something  of  the  dilettante.  The  most  miscellaneous 
of  writers,  in  his  last  days  he  was  sorely  put  to  it 
to  make  any  intelligible  plan  of  arrangement  for 
his  collected  work;  and  his  latest  editor  has  broken 
up  that  plan  without  being  able  to  devise  any  much 
better.  A  sort  of  Admirable  Crichton,  he  did  nothing 
with  his  knowledge,  he  reached  no  conclusions,  he 
settled  no  questions,  marked  out  no  new  paths  for 
human  thought ;  and  the  large  familiar  elements  of 
life  out  of  which  great  literature  is  made,  man's  love 
and  hope  and  desire,  —  still  less  to  these  could  he 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

give  such  expression  as  shall  thrill  or  inspire.  He 
could  only  gossip;  curious,  usually  interesting, 
sometimes  instructive,  it  was  still  gossip  —  gossip 
through  fourteen  stricken  volumes. 

But  this  is  not  the  worst.  Gossip  is  often  delight- 
ful. But  this  talk,  page  after  page,  in  the  cold  print, 
without  the  fascinating  voice  and  presence  of  the 
Opium-Eater  himself,  if  I  mistake  not,  will  often  try 
the  patience  of  the  reader.  We  find  ourselves  re- 
membering that  life  is  short.  De  Quincey  is  excel- 
lent reading,  if  you  have  leisure;  but  of  leisure  he 
demands  a  great  deal.  Professor  Masson  suggests 
that  a  young  man  could  do  no  better  than  to  take  three 
months  and  read  through  the  whole  body  of  De 
Quincey's  writing.  Such  a  course  would  doubtless 
sharpen  his  intellect  and  broaden  greatly  the  range 
of  his  knowledge;  but  I  suspect  the  young  man 
would  have  some  heavy  half-hours.  Yet  another 
critic,  Mr.  Saintsbury,  remarks  it  is  probably  in 
youth  that  the  merits  of  De  Quincey  are  best  appre- 
ciated; he  ought  to  be  read,  thinks  Mr.  Saintsbury, 
when  you  are  about  fifteen  or  sixteen.  Much  of 
De  Quincey  would  probably  tax  the  brains  of  a  lad 
of  sixteen ;  yet  Mr.  Saintsbury  may  be  right  in  deem- 
ing that  age  most  tolerant  of  De  Quincey's  manner. 
For  at  sixteen  there  seems  time  enough  for  anything; 
art  is  short  and  life  is  long;  before  we  are  fifty  we 
learn  better. 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

We  admit  to  those  who  admire  his  style  that  De 
Quincey  is  never  verbose;  he  never  repeats  the  same 
thought  with  needless  fulness  of  phrase.  But  he  is 
the  most  prolix  of  mortals.  Tennyson  says  of  the 
flower  in  the  crannied  wall  — 

"I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies, 
I  hold  you  here,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand, 
Little  flower  —  but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is." 

It  is  this  kind  of  knowledge  of  every  fact  and  every 
truth  that  De  Quincey  seems  bent  on  imparting.  In 
a  very  suggestive  passage  of  the  Reminiscences  he 
says  that  in  early  youth  he  labored  under  a  peculiar 
embarrassment  whenever  he  sought  to  convey  his 
thought  in  language:  "It  was  not  words  only  I 
wanted;  but  I  could  not  unravel,  I  could  not  even 
make  perfectly  conscious  to  myself,  the  subsidiary 
thoughts  into  which  one  leading  thought  often  radi- 
ates; or,  at  least,  I  could  not  do  this  with  anything 
like  the  rapidity  requisite  for  conversation.  I  la- 
bored like  a  sibyl  instinct  with  the  burden  of  pro- 
phetic woe  as  often  as  I  found  myself  dealing  with 
any  topic  in  which  the  understanding  combined  with 
deep  feelings  to  suggest  mixed  and  tangled  thoughts ; 
and  thus  partly  —  partly  also  from  my  invincible 
habit  of  revery  —  I  had  a  most  distinguished  talent 
' pour  le  silence.'"  This  states  admirably  the  mode 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

of  thought  he  coveted  when  young,  and  attained  in 
such  perfection  in  his  maturer  years.  With  a  mar- 
vellous richness  of  vocabulary  and  the  utmost  pre- 
cision of  phrase,  he  was  never  content  to  isolate  a 
truth  from  its  connections,  as  it  is  needful  to  do  if 
we  would  give  a  clear  statement  of  it  in  moderate 
compass.  He  must  pull  his  thought  up  by  the  roots, 
and  then  trace  out  with  laborious  precision  all  its 
minute  filaments,  and  its  ramifications  into  a  network 
of  other  thought.  Everything  reminds  him  of  some- 
thing else.  Now  if  he  had,  and  we  had,  the  secular 
leisures  of  a  Methuselah,  this  would  be  a  most  profit- 
able exercise;  but  the  result  in  our  little  day  is  that 
he  exhausts  our  patience  and  doesn't  exhaust  any- 
thing else. 

In  the  treatment  of  any  subject  De  Quincey  sel- 
dom begins  at  the  beginning ;  he  begins  a  good  way 
back  of  the  beginning.  He  has  to  work  inward 
through  a  thicket  of  secondary  suggestion  that  has 
grown  up  about  his  original  thought,  and  his  path 
is  sure  to  be  circuitous  and  broken  by  numerous  side 
excursions.  Take  as  an  example  his  method  of 
approach  to  the  leading  proposition  of  one  section 
of  his  famous  essay  on  Style  —  the  proposition  that 
Greek  literature  is  concentrated  in  two  periods  about 
seventy-five  years  apart.  That  is  a  simple  historical 
statement,  and  one  would  think  it  might  be  laid  down 
and  proved  at  once.  How  does  De  Quincey  get  at 

136 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

it?  He  begins  with  a  reference  to  the  late  Latin 
poet,  Velleius  Paterculus,  and  proceeds  to  give  a 
sketch  of  his  life  and  times  in  three  pages;  then  comes 
the  statement  for  which  Paterculus  was  called  in, 
to  the  effect  that  genius  tends  to  "agglomerate"; 
the  passage  is  given  in  the  original,  and  translated 
clause  by  clause,  with  an  embroidery  of  discussion 
on  the  style  of  Paterculus  —  three  pages  more ;  then 
come  examples  from  various  literatures  ancient  and 
modern,  proving  the  truth  of  the  assertion  of  Pater- 
culus—  four  pages  more;  then  the  reasons  in  the 
constitution  of  the  human  mind  for  this  periodic 
manifestation  of  genius,  and  the  consequent  necessity 
of  the  alternation  of  creative  and  critical  periods  — 
four  pages  more;  and  then,  at  last,  we  come  to  our 
central  proposition  that  there  were  two  such  periods 
in  Greek  literature.  All  this  preliminary  pother  over 
Paterculus  is  quite  needless;  it  does  not  prove  or 
really  introduce  De  Quincey's  main  thesis;  it  is  all 
excrescence. 

Sometimes  he  is  quite  unable  to  get  through  this 
preliminary  matter,  and  never  reaches  his  central 
theme  at  all.  Like  Coleridge,  he  has  the  exasperat- 
ing trick  of  promising  some  elaborate  discussion  or 
exposition,  bringing  up  horse,  foot,  and  dragoons  to 
make  ready,  and  then  abruptly  retiring  from  the 
field.  All  readers  of  Coleridge's  Biographia  Lit- 
eraria  will  remember  the  lively  anticipation  with 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

which  they  —  unless  forewarned  —  expected  his 
promised  x  discussion  of  the  Imagination  or  Es em- 
plastic  Faculty;  and  the  inclination  to  profanity 
when  they  found  Coleridge  suddenly  deciding,  after 
all  his  parade  of  preparation,  to  postpone  the  dis- 
cussion to  some  more  convenient  season.  De  Quin- 
cey,  in  his  Letters  to  a  Young  Man,  does  precisely 
the  same  thing  with  reference  to  the  philosophy  of 
Kant.  He  informs  his  correspondent  that  he  will 
do  what  divers  other  philosophers  have  vainly 
essayed  to  do,  give  him  a  succinct  statement  of  the 
fundamental  positions  of  the  Kantian  philosophy. 
Ah,  thinks  the  reader,  now  we  have  something  definite 
and  much  to  be  desired.  But,  first,  De  Quincey  must 
expose  the  ignorance  and  folly  of  previous  exposi- 
tors —  six  of  them ;  then  he  must  remind  his  corre- 
spondent that  the  difficulty  of  Kant  arises  principally 
from  his  terminology,  and  show  that  a  new  terminol- 
ogy is  a  necessity  in  a  new  philosophy.  By  that  time 
he  is  at  the  end  of  his  sheet,  and  forced  to  postpone 
the  exposition  of  Kant  to  another  letter  —  which  he 
never  wrote. 

And  even  when  he  does  reach  his  theme,  his  treat- 
ment of  it  is  often  sadly  lacking  in  proportion.  Some 
of  his  critical  essays,  for  example,  are  so  largely  taken 
up  with  subordinate  or  collateral  matters  as  to  give 
you  little  help  in  estimating  the  essential  character  or 
value  of  the  work  criticised.  You  have  been  amused 
138 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

with  a  great  variety  of  minor  considerations,  but  you 
come  out  at  the  end  a  little  mazed,  asking  yourself 
what  you  have  got,  after  all;  and  as  far  as  the  main 
object  of  your  search  is  concerned,  very  much  in  the 
condition  —  if  I  may  borrow  one  of  De  Quincey's 
own  jokes  —  of  the  student  to  whom  was  propounded 
the  old  Cambridge  problem,  "Given  the  captain's 
name  and  the  year  of  our  Lord,  to  determine  the 
longitude  of  the  ship." 

Perhaps  it  is  in  his  narrative  writing  that  we  find 
the  most  remarkable  instances  of  this  vagabond 
manner.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that  here  it  usually 
doesn't  so  much  matter.  When  De  Quincey  is 
recounting  his  own  experiences,  his  rambling  garru- 
lity is  rather  pleasant.  We  know  he  will  never  get 
through;  this  is  no  story  to  be  finished.  When  he 
has  talked  long  enough  he  will  stop;  and  we  need 
listen  no  longer  than  we  wish.  I  don't  know  that 
any  special  illumination  is  spread  over  De  Quincey's 
life  in  the  Manchester  Grammar  School  by  telling  us 
that  his  mother  had  a  friend  who,  when  a  pretty  widow 
of  thirty-six,  had  married  an  ugly  German  named 
Schreiber,  who  took  snuff ;  that  Mrs.  Schreiber,  after- 
ward separated  from  Schreiber,  took  charge  of  two 
orphan  girls  from  India,  and  placed  them  under  a 
system  of  excellent  discipline  that  it  takes  fifteen 
pages  to  describe;  that  one  of  these  girls,  with  a 
Madonna-like  face  and  almond-shaped  eyes,  married 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Lord  Carberry,  studied  New  Testament  Greek  with 
De  Quincey,  and  discussed  with  him  for  ten  pages  the 
relation  of  the  Christian  religion  to  pagan  morality; 
that  Mrs.  Schreiber,  having  a  cancerous  affection, 
called  in  the  services  of  a  distinguished  surgeon,  Dr. 
White,  who  administered  hemlock  with  some  bene- 
ficial effects;  that  Dr.  White's  two  daughters  were 
very  fond  of  Lady  Carberry  —  especially  the  younger; 
that  Dr.  White  had  a  museum  and  in  it  a  mummy  and 
a  skeleton;  that  the  mummy  was  deposited  in  a  tall 
clock  case,  the  face  covered  with  a  piece  of  white 
velvet  and  not  disclosed  even  to  Lady  Carberry; 
that  some  seventy  years  before,  when  there  was  still 
something  of  glamour  about  the  life  of  the  highway- 
man (for  which  plausible  reasons  may  be  adduced  in 
three  pages)  there  had  been  a  notable  robbery  and 
murder  committed  in  a  brick  house  on  the  west  side 
of  the  college  green  in  the  city  of  Bristol,  near  where 
Southey  and  Coleridge  afterward  lived,  and  forty- 
eight  hours  before  the  robbery,  a  very  tall,  handsome 
young  man,  respected  by  his  neighbors,  had  ridden 
out  of  the  village  of  Knutsford,  and  was  by  many 
suspected  to  have  been  the  robber;  and  that  the 
skeleton  in  the  museum  of  Dr.  White,  who  attended 
Mrs.  Schreiber,  who  reared  Lady  Carberry,  who 
talked  Greek  with  De  Quincey,  may  have  been  the 
skeleton  of  this  robber.  All  this  isn't  exactly  neces- 
sary to  our  conception  of  the  life  and  studies  of  young 

140 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

De  Quincey  in  the  Manchester  Grammar  School, 
but  it  is  amusing.  To  be  sure,  a  life  of  De  Quincey 
written  on  this  plan  would  reach  "  from  here  to  Meso- 
potamy,  a  thing  the  imagination  boggles  at";  but  De 
Quincey  isn't  writing  his  life,  he  is  only  talking. 

In  argument  or  exposition,  where  we  have  a  right 
to  expect  method  and  conclusion,  this  manner  is  less 
excusable.  Yet  here  it  is  not  due  to  revery  or  mere 
vagrancy  of  thought,  but  rather  to  De  Quincey's 
irresistible  tendency  to  chase  every  subject  into  all 
its  relations.  He  himself  justly  claimed  to  be  a 
vigorous  and  accurate  thinker;  but  his  mind  was 
fascinated  by  the  complexity  of  forces  that  enter  into 
every  event,  the  tangled  skein  of  motives  that  issue 
in  every  volition.  Minds  of  this  habit  cannot  con- 
template one  thing  at  a  time,  and  so  are  ill-fitted  for 
clear  exposition ;  they  cannot  decide  promptly,  and 
so  are  ill-fitted  for  efficient  action.  But  they  often 
greatly  stimulate  and  broaden  other  minds.  They 
disclose  unsuspected  truth,  and  show  the  profounder 
reason  that  underlies  our  conventional  beliefs.  Cole- 
ridge is  an  excellent  case  in  point ;  in  imaginative 
literature  the  familiar  example  is  Hamlet.  If  De 
Quincey  has  left  us  nothing  of  high  philosophic  worth, 
this  is  not  so  much  because  his  intellect  was  less 
acute  than  that  of  Coleridge  or  even  because  he  had 
less  power  of  concentration ;  but  rather  because  he 
could  never  bring  himself  to  observe  any  just  pro- 
141 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

portion  or  relative  value  among  the  subjects  of  his 
thought.  He  will  often  overlook  all  the  obvious  and 
important  phases  of  his  theme  to  trace  out  some  re- 
mote or  unfamiliar  implication.  He  seems  to  care 
more  for  novelty  than  for  truth,  and  is  more  inter- 
ested to  surprise  than  to  persuade.  Nothing  pleases 
him  better  than  to  fasten  to  some  familiar  proposition 
a  long  sorites,  and  then  follow  his  sorites  underground 
till  the  conclusion  emerges  at  last  in  some  quite 
unexpected  quarter.  He  loves  thus  to  disclose  links 
of  cause  we  had  never  thought  of,  or  show  the  inade- 
quacy of  some  generally  accepted  notion.  For  ex- 
ample, the  great  literature  of  Greece,  he  says,  owes 
many  of  its  distinctive  qualities  to  the  fact  that  it 
never  could  be,  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word, 
published.  But  why  was  it  not  published?  Why, 
of  course,  you  say,  because  the  art  of  printing  had  not 
then  been  invented.  Oh,  no,  rejoins  De  Quincey, 
that  is  not  the  reason;  that  is  a  foolish  reply;  the 
art  of  printing  had  been  invented  and  lost  again  half 
a  dozen  times  before  the  fifteenth  century  —  witness 
the  beautiful  inscriptions  upon  coins.  It  was  not 
printing  that  was  lacking,  but  paper.  And  why 
paper  ?  Because  there  were  no  cotton  or  linen  rags. 
And  why  no  rags?  Because  people  almost  univer- 
sally wore  woollen  clothing.  And  thus  the  fact  that 
the  Greeks  wore  woollen  clothes  determines  the  liter- 
ary style  of  their  writing. 

142 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

v 

The  humor  of  De  Quincey,  when  it  is  genuine  and 
spontaneous,  usually  proceeds  from  this  same  liking 
to  trace  remote  or  unexpected  affiliations  of  thought. 
Much  of  his  humor,  however,  is  neither  genuine  nor 
spontaneous.  I  must  confess  I  cannot  find  much 
humor  in  the  famous  paper  on  Murder  as  a  Fine  Art. 
The  phrase  that  forms  the  title  is  witty,  and  had  it 
been  used  in  conversation  to  point  a  satiric  reference, 
might  have  been  a  brilliant  bon  mot;  but  to  work 
the  subject  out,  with  laborious  ingenuity  into  all  its 
grewsome  details,  preserving  the  while  the  temper 
of  the  connoisseur,  this  is  merely  a  forcible  inversion 
of  our  normal  feeling.  It  is  hardly  to  be  called  humor 
at  all ;  certainly  it  is  not  a  good  humor.  Nor  is  there 
any  purpose  in  it;  there  is  no  irony  in  the  paper, 
no  satiric  intent,  no  truth  of  any  sort  under  the  fool- 
ing. De  Quincey  pleaded  the  example  of  Swift  in 
some  of  his  grim  jesting  in  Gulliver,  or  the  famous 
"Proposal"  for  eating  the  children  in  Ireland.  But 
there  is  no  real  similarity  in  the  cases.  Swift's  papers 
are  examples  of  the  most  awful  satire;  Swift  is  in  sad 
and  terrible  earnest.  Similarly  De  Quincey  might, 
one  thinks,  have  written  a  satire,  for  example,  upon 
the  tendency  of  a  certain  school  of  dramatists  to 
treat  the  seventh  commandment  as  he  had  treated 
the  sixth ;  but  he  did  not.  He  was  aiming  only  to  be 
facetious;  and  neither  Adultery  nor  Murder  as  a 
Fine  Art  is  matter  for  pure  comedy.  Another  very 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

dreary  form  of  De  Quincey's  attempts  at  humor  is 
his  heavy  jocularity  and  vulgar  slang,  a  sort  of  la- 
bored gaucherie.  Throughout  a  long  essay  he  calls 
the  historian  Josephus  " Wicked  Joseph,"  or  "Mr. 
Joe";  he  tells  at  great  length,  in  another  essay,  the 
story  of  Bentley's  famous  lawsuit  with  Colbraith  — 
whom  he  terms  a  "malicious  old  toad"  —  and  at  the 
end,  or,  as  he  puts  it,  "when  the  last  round  is  over," 
he  calls  out :  "Well,  Colbraith,  how  do  you  find  your- 
self by  this  time  ?  I  think  you'll  not  meddle  with  our 
Dick  again"  — our  Dick  being,  of  course,  the  great 
Richard  Bentley.  After  quoting  a  passage  from 
Cicero,  he  goes  on,  "After  such  a  statement  as  this 
did  Kikero  not  tumble  downstairs  and  break  three  of 
his  legs  in  his  haste  to  call  a  public  meeting  ?  "  When 
he  can  no  longer  contain  his  astonishment  or  indig- 
nation, he  will  occasionally  relieve  himself,  not  by 
a  good  round  "damn" — which  would  at  least  be 
spontaneous  —  but  by  some  such  elegant  expletive 
as  "O  crimini!"  This  sort  of  thing  from  a  man 
of  culture  is  certainly  surprising;  but  most  readers 
will  not  deem  it  witty.  He  can  now  and  then  be 
sprightly  and  diverting  without  descending  to  this 
horse  play,  as,  for  example,  in  his  banter  upon  Cole- 
ridge's two  friends,  Ball  and  Bell  —  Sir  Alexander 
Ball  who  had  no  abstract  ideas,  and  Dr.  Andrew 
Bell  who  had  two,  one  on  the  moon  and  the  other  on 
education.  Yet  even  in  such  raillery  he  is  never  quite 

144 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

safe  from  some  slip  into  vulgarity.  His  deliberate  at- 
tempts at  the  facetious  are  always  likely  to  be  forced. 
His  best  humor  seems  quite  unconscious,  some  form 
of  that  waywardness  and  whimsicality  characteristic 
of  his  thinking.  Mr.  Bagehot  says  somewhere  that 
there  is  humor  in  the  thought  of  an  immortal  soul 
tying  his  shoe-string.  It  is  this  contrast  between  the 
infinite  and  the  trivial,  the  strange  immanence  of  the 
sublime  in  the  commonplace,  that  fascinates  De 
Quincey,  and  occasionally  issues  in  passages  of  pe- 
culiar and  genuine  humor. 

But  this  sense  of  the  infinite  significance  and  sug- 
gestion in  common  things  is  best  seen  in  De  Quin- 
cey 's  many  passages  of  pathos  or  sublimity.  His 
imagination  had  power  to  interpret  the  wide  possi- 
bilities latent  in  the  present  and  the  actual.  He  can 
trace  with  marvellous  skill  the  subtle  links  of  thought 
or  feeling  by  which  the  simple  incident,  the  passing 
emotion,  may  draw  into  the  study  of  our  imagina- 
tion a  vast  complex  of  experience,  with  all  its  contrasts 
of  good  and  evil,  of  joy  and  sorrow.  Thus  while 
on  a  visit  to  Windsor  he  watches  a  group  of  young 
men  and  women  in  a  contra-dance.  This  suggests 
to  him,  first,  a  protest  against  that  tendency  in  all 
the  arts  to  substitute  the  difficult  for  the  beautiful 
which  had  almost  pushed  out  of  use  this  graceful, 
old-fashioned  dance ;  then  comes  a  discussion  — • 
relegated  to  a  page-long  footnote  —  of  the  disputed 
L  i4S 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

etymology  of  the  term  "contra-dance";  after  this 
he  gives  a  brief  but  subtle  analysis  of  the  emotion 
of  " passionate  sadness"  evoked  by  the  spectacle  of 
the  dance,  and  an  explanation  of  the  fact  that  all 
our  highest  and  most  festal  emotions  are  tinged  with 
melancholy;  and  then,  at  last,  in  a  passage  of  lofty 
rhetoric  and  solemn  music  he  renders  the  large 
imaginative  significance  of  the  scene  with  its  vague 
power  over  our  emotions :  — 

"A  sort  of  mask  of  human  life,  with  its  whole 
equipage  of  pomps  and  glories,  its  luxury  of  sight  and 
sound,  its  hours  of  golden  youth,  and  the  intermin- 
able revolution  of  ages  hurrying  after  ages,  and  one 
generation  treading  upon  the  flying  footsteps  of 
another;  whilst  all  the  while  the  overruling  music 
attempers  the  mind  to  the  spectacle,  the  subject  to 
the  object,  the  beholder  to  the  vision." 

Any  ordinary  experience  may  suffice  thus  to  set 
his  imagination  at  work,  and  produce  one  of  those 
purple  patches  that,  everybody  knows,  are  scattered 
so  thickly  though  his  pages. 

Closely  akin  to  this  feeling  of  indefinite  emotional 
meanings  inherent  in  common  things  was  De  Quin- 
cey's  liking  for  mystery  of  every  sort.  He  was  used 
to  say  he  could  not  live  without  it.  He  relished  any 
tale  of  wonder,  dreams,  omens,  popular  superstitions, 
any  mere  cock-and-bull  story.  He  wrote  papers  on 

146 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

Free  Masonry,  On  the  Order  of  the  Rosy  Cross,  on 
the  Pagan  Oracles.  The  opening  lines  of  Macbeth 
—  the  creepy  chant  of  the  witches  —  haunted  him 
all  his  days;  and  his  paper  on  the  Knocking  Scene, 
altogether  apart  from  the  characteristic  subtlety  of 
its  reasoning,  shows  what  a  shudder  that  eerie  bit 
of  stage  business  gave  to  his  imagination.  But  he 
had,  at  the  opposite  extreme  of  sensibility,  a  deep, 
half-mournful  awe  before  the  inscrutable  mystery 
in  which  our  lives  are  rooted.  Always  restless 
within  the  narrow  limits  of  positive  knowledge,  he 
loved  to  send  his  thoughts  out  beyond  those  confines 
into  that  dim  border-land  of  imagination  and  con- 
jecture where  knowledge  shades  into  wonder  and 
loses  itself  in  the  dark  profound.  He  had  little  of 
Wordsworth's  interest  in  the  common  face  of  nature, 
but  at  times  some  sight  or  sound  would  lay  sudden 
awe  upon  him  —  as  that  summer  wind  which  began 
to  blow  while  he  stood  by  the  corpse  of  his  sister, 
hollow,  solemn,  Memnonian,  as  if  it  had  swept  the 
fields  of  mortality  for  centuries,  the  one  audible  sym- 
bol of  eternity !  All  his  readers  will  remember  pas- 
sages of  speculation  in  which  De  Quincey  is  lifted 
into  sublimity  by  his  solemn  sense  of  the  infinity  pof 
all  our  human  powers  and  affections.  Like  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  whom  he  so  much  admired,  he 
loved  to  pose  his  apprehension  with  mysteries,  and 
pursue  his  reason  to  an  O  altitudd!  9 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

After  going  over  the  whole  body  of  De  Quincey's 
Works,  one  is  constrained  to  admit  they  contain 
rather  surprisingly  little  of  substantive  and  perma- 
nent value.  The  most  industrious  of  writers,  his 
energy  was  dissipated  upon  a  multitude  of  curious 
topics,  and  he  never  finished,  or  even  attempted,  any 
work  of  signal  importance.  Of  the  practical,  out- 
ward life  of  men,  such  a  shy  and  secluded  bookworm 
could  have  no  real  knowledge.  He  has  really  noth- 
ing to  say  upon  all  the  urgent  political  and  social 
questions  that  were  agitating  the  minds  of  English- 
men all  his  lifetime.  You  will  get  no  aid  from  him 
for  the  conduct  of  life.  He  lived  in  his  own  quiet 
world  of  books,  of  dreams,  of  memories. 

This  statement  suggests  what  is  perhaps  the  sim- 
plest and  best  classification  of  his  writings.  With 
unimportant  exceptions  they  fall  into  three  groups, 
as  they  are  concerned  with  his  reading,  his  imagina- 
tion, or  his  personal  reminiscences.  In  the  first  of 
these  groups  would  be  placed  his  papers  on  literary 
biography  and  history,  on  literary  theory,  and  the 
purely  critical  appreciations  of  individual  writers. 
The  biographical  sketches,  like  those  of  Shakespeare, 
Pope,  Bentley,  are  always  interesting,  but  they  lack 
proportion.  De  Quincey  cared  little  for  the  plain, 
outward  facts  that  make  up  the  greater  part  of 
every  man's  life,  and  was  constantly  drawn  away  to 
the  more  curious  but  less  important  phases  of  char- 

148 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

acter  and  action.  Or,  if  his  subject  be  one  inviting 
epic  treatment,  like  Joan  of  Arc,  he  may  omit  all 
historical  detail  and  lift  his  essay  into  a  kind  of  ode 
or  heroic  declamation.  His  more  characteristic 
historical  papers,  however,  are  usually  concerned 
with  some  of  the  enigmas  or  curiosities  of  history, 
The  Essenes,  The  Pagan  Oracles,  The  Character 

of  Cicero,  The  Casuistry  of  Roman  Meals,  Judas 

• 

Iscariot.  But  of  the  papers  in  this  first  group, 
the  most  valuable  are  not  biographical  or  historical. 
Knowing  far  more  of  literature  than  of  life,  always 
interested  in  questions  of  rhetorical  form,  it  was 
natural  that  De  Quincey  should  put  some  of  his 
best  thinking  into  the  essays  on  literary  theory.  He 
has  perhaps  nowhere  written  anything  more  thought- 
ful and  fertile  than  the  Letters  to  a  Young  Man,  and 
the  essays  on  Rhetoric,  Style,  and  Conversation. 
These  papers  do  not,  indeed,  make  any  systematic 
body  of  critical  philosophy,  but  they  abound  in 
detached  statements  of  principle,  always  penetrat- 
ing, and  sometimes  —  like  the  distinction  between  the 
literature  of  knowledge  and  the  literature  of  power  — 
touching  fundamental  truth.  It  may  be  said,  per- 
haps, that  this  famous  distinction  doesn't  go  quite  to 
the  root  of  the  matter;  De  Quincey  does  not  see 
clearly  that  the  dynamic  element  in  writing  which 
he  calls  power  is  always  emotion,  and  that  he  is 
really  distinguishing,  not  between  two  kinds  of 

149 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

literature,  but  between  literature  and  science.  Yet 
the  passage  is  one  of  the  most  suggestive  in  modern 
critical  writing;  and  you  will  hardly  read  a  half- 
dozen  pages  in  these  literary  papers  without  getting 
some  such  fillip  to  your  thinking. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  De  Quincey's  literary 
theory  is  frequently  warped  or  narrowed  by  his 
personal  preferences.  Every  critic,  I  suppose,  is 
inclined  to  mistake  the  dictates  of  his  own  taste 
for  universal  laws;  De  Quincey  was  especially 
liable  to  this  error.  He  too  often  assumes  that  the 
forms  of  excellence  he  himself  had  attained  or  appre- 
ciated are  the  standards  of  all  good  writing.  For 
example,  he  pronounces  the  essential  and  preemi- 
nent virtue  of  style  to  consist  in  the  vital  connection 
of  successive  sentences,  not  merely  the  mechanical 
linkings  of  grammar  and  rhetoric,  but  the  way  in 
which  each  sentence  seems  to  beget  the  next,  so  that 
the  thought  seems  growing  before  you  as  you  read. 
To  use  his  own  pet  word  —  which  be  borrowed 
from  Coleridge  —  a  good  style  is  before  all  things 
"sequacious."  He  thinks  Lamb's  writing  lacks 
this  virtue;  he  criticises  Johnson  for  the  want  of  it; 
while  he  finds  it  the  secret  of  Burke's  undoubted 
mastery.  Well,  this  is  certainly  a  merit  of  good 
writing ;  and  it  is  just  the  merit  especially  necessary 
and  especially  difficult  with  a  habit  of  thought  like 
De  Quincey's.  For  to  render  the  nice  distinctions 

150 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

of  his  analysis,  the  subtle  blendings  of  his  feeling, 
the  vague  shapes  of  his  fancy,  and  at  the  same  time 
to  follow  the  devious  course  of  his  reflection,  to  call 
back  the  digressions  that  dart  out  constantly  to 
either  side  of  the  line  of  his  discussion,  to  herd  the 
wayward  multitude  of  his  thoughts  into  something 
like  unity  and  keep  them  moving  in  one  direction,  — 
all  this  not  only  demands  a  vast  vocabulary,  but  it 
strains  to  the  utmost  the  mechanics  of  rhetorical 
connection.  De  Quincey  was  past-master  in  all 
the  arts  of  excursus,  parenthesis,  transition,  what 
the  rhetoricians  call  "explicit  reference."  He  uses 
more  dashes  to  the  page  than  any  other  prose-writer 
of  equal  eminence,  and  yet  you  never  quite  get 
lost  in  his  paragraph.  He  was  pardonably  proud 
of  having  attained  this  particular  virtue  of  style 
in  such  high  degree;  but  he  forgot  that  an  author 
of  different  mental  habit  might  have  no  need  for  it, 
and  that  most  delightful  English  may  be  written 
which  is  not  at  all  "sequacious."  And  what  was 
worse,  his  insistence  upon  this  virtue  blinded  him 
to  the  importance  of  some  others.  He  blamed 
Johnson  for  always  looking  backward  upon  his 
thought,  for  framing  his  sentences  mentally  one  by 
one  before  he  uttered  them.  But  we  may  blame 
De  Quincey  for  an  opposite  and  perhaps  a  worse 
fault;  his  thought  does  grow  under  his  handling, 
but  we  never  know  whereunto  it  will  grow.  He 


A   GROUP   OF    ENGLISH    ESSAYISTS 

doesn't  know  himself.  He  has  no  foresight  of  the 
end  from  the  beginning.  The  result  is  that  his 
writing  is  often  quite  formless.  His  essay  is  seldom 
a  clear-cut,  well-shaped  thing.  There  is  no  outline 
in  his  work,  and  hence  no  symmetry. 

The  authors  he  himself  most  admired  and  imi- 
tated are  early  seventeenth-century  prose  men, 
especially  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne. 
He  has  their  volume,  their  elaborate  stateliness  of 
movement.  Sometimes  he  reproduces,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  the  very  imagery  and  rhythm  of 
some  great  passage  in  his  models.  Every  one  who 
has  read  them  will  remember  the  solemn  words 
with  which  Walter  Raleigh  closes  his  History  of 
the  World  :  - 

"  O  eloquent,  just,  and  mighty  Death !  Whom 
none  could  advise,  thou  hast  persuaded;  what 
none  hath  dared,  thou  hast  done ;  and  whom  all  the 
world  hath  flattered,  thou  only  hast  cast  out  of  the 
world  and  despised;  thou  hast  drawn  together  all 
the  far-stretched  greatness,  all  the  pride,  cruelty, 
and  ambition  of  man,  and  covered  it  all  over  with 
these  two  narrow  words,  'Hie  Jacet'!" 

It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  De  Quincey  had 
these  magnificent  lines  in  memory  when  he  wove 
that  famous  purple  patch  which  closes  one  section 
of  the  Confessions :  — 


THOMAS    DE   QUINCEY 

"  O  just,  subtle,  and  all-conquering  opium !  that 
to  the  hearts  of  rich  and  poor  alike,  for  the 
wounds  that  will  never  heal,  and  for  the  pangs 
of  grief  that  tempt  the  spirit  to  rebel,  bringest 
an  assuaging  balm;  eloquent  opium!  that  with 
thy  potent  rhetoric  stealest  away  the  purposes 
of  wrath,  pleadest  effectually  for  relenting  pity, 
and  through  one  night's  heavenly  sleep  callest 
back  to  the  guilty  man  the  visions  of  his  infancy 
and  hands  washed  pure  from  blood;  O  just  and 
righteous  opium!  that  to  the  chancery  of  dreams 
summonest,  for  the  triumphs  of  despairing  innocence, 
false  witnesses,  and  confoundest  perjury,  and  dost 
reverse  the  sentences  of  unrighteous  judges ;  —  thou 
buildest  upon  the  bosom  of  darkness,  out  of  the 
fantastic  imagery  of  the  brain,  cities  and  temples, 
beyond  the  art  of  Phidias  and  Praxiteles,  beyond 
the  splendors  of  Babylon  and  Hekatompylos ;  and 
'from  the  anarchy  of  dreaming  sleep/  callest  into 
sunny  light  the  faces  of  long-buried  beauties,  and 
the  blessed  household  countenances,  cleansed  from 
the  ' dishonors  of  the  grave.'  Thou  only  givest  these 
gifts  to  man;  and  thou  hast  the  keys  of  Paradise, 
O  just,  subtle,  and  mighty  opium!" 

This  is  De  Quincey's  best  manner;  every  epithet 
justly  chosen,  disclosing  sudden  glimpses  of  vast, 
vague  imagery,  filled  with  a  lofty  melancholy,  and 


A   GROUP   OF    ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

moving  with  a  slow  and  solemn  stepping  rhythm. 
And  everybody  knows  that  there  are  near  a  score  of 
such  passages  in  De  Quincey's  pages.  If  they  are 
inferior  to  the  best  things  in  Taylor  and  Browne, — 
and  they  are,  —  it  is  only  because  De  Quincey  is 
just  a  little  grandiose.  It  is  art,  not  nature.  He  is 
building  the  lofty  line;  whereas  the  rhetoric  of 
Taylor  or  Browne  is  natural,  inevitable  —  they  can 
no  other.  And  here  again  De  Quincey  falls  into  the 
error  of  measuring  all  literature  by  the  quality  he 
most  admires.  He  pronounces  this  lofty,  ornate 
manner  the  supreme,  distinctive  rhetorical  excellence. 
Rhetoric,  he  says,  is  "the  art  of  aggrandizing  and 
bringing  out  into  strong  relief,  by  means  of  various 
and  striking  thoughts,  some  aspect  of  truth  which 
of  itself  is  supported  by  no  spontaneous  feelings, 
and  therefore  rests  upon  artificial  aids."  Such  a 
definition  makes  of  rhetoric  an  artifice  rather  than 
an  art,  a  means  of  giving  extrinsic  interest  to  truth 
rather  than  of  disclosing  its  inherent  power  and 
beauty.  It  describes  pretty  accurately  much  of 
De  Quincey's  writing,  but  it  does  not  apply  with 
any  precision  even  to  the  elaborate  manner  of  Taylor 
and  Browne,  and  still  less  is  it  a  good  definition  of 
rhetoric  in  general.  And  if  it  is  said  that  De  Quincey 
is  here  using  the  term  "  rhetoric  "  in  a  technical  sense, 
as  denoting  a  special  form  of  literary  effect,  it  must 
still  be  urged  that  some  such  definition  is  assumed 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

in  his  critical  verdicts  upon  all  sorts  of  writing.  He 
had  no  feeling  for  the  charm  or  the  strength  of 
simplicity.  He  complains  of  Lamb  that  "the 
gyrations  within  which  his  sentiment  wheels  are  the 
briefest  possible,"  and  that  he  "sinks  away  from 
openings  suddenly  offering  themselves  to  flights  of 
pathos  or  solemnity";  forgetting  that  he,  Thomas 
De  Quincey,  might  well  have  afforded  to  pay  a 
king's  ransom  if  he  could  have  written  a  single  page 
of  such  English  as  Lamb's  Dream  Children.  His 
remarks  upon  the  style  of  Swift  are  absurd,  assuming 
as  they  do  that  the  only  form  of  English  to  be  ad- 
mired is  that  of  the  Opium-Eater.  Any  honest 
skipper,  he  says,  can  write  like  Gulliver,  but  suppos- 
ing Swift  had  been  set  to  write  a  pendant  to  Raleigh's 
great  apostrophe  to  Death  —  quoted  above  — 
"what  sort  of  a  ridiculous  figure,"  cries  he,  "would 
your  poor,  bald  Jonathan  have  cut?"  Yes,  and 
suppose,  as  Leslie  Stephen  suggests,  Thomas  De 
Quincey  had  been  set  to  write  another  Drapier's 
Letter?  If  any  man  thinks  himself  able  to  write 
as  Jonathan  Swift  wrote,  he  may  very  easily  convince 
himself  of  his  error  by  trying  it.  Swift  meant  busi- 
ness. He  wasn't  writing  in  an  opium  revery.  His 
style  is  hard  as  nails.  It  was  written  for  shop- 
keepers; but  it  frightened  kings  and  ministers,  and 
it  will  be  found  good  stuff  after  most  of  De  Quincey's 
purple  patches  have  gone  to  the  rag-bag  of  oblivion. 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

These  remarks  may  suggest  De  Quincey's  limi- 
tations as  a  critic.  He  has  been  much  admired  in 
that  capacity.  His  editor  and  biographer,  Mr. 
Masson,  pronounces  him  facile  princeps  among  the 
critics  of  his  generation;  but  this  is  extravagant, 
even  for  an  admirer.  He  certainly  gives  us  many 
penetrating  glimpses  into  the  philosophy  of  criticism, 
but  in  the  ability  to  apply  critical  principles  to  the 
interpretation  or  estimate  of  particular  works,  in 
sanity  of  judgment  and  breadth  of  appreciation, 
he  is  by  no  means  the  equal,  I  should  hold,  of 
Coleridge,  Hazlitt,  or  Lamb.  Merely  as  a  reviewer, 
Jeffrey  is  the  better  man.  For  that  kind  of  work 
De  Quincey  had  no  liking.  He  preferred  to  study 
the  man  rather  than  the  book.  In  fact,  he  says  in 
the  opening  passage  of  his  essay  on  Wordsworth's 
poetry,  1845,  that  up  to  that  time  he  had  "never 
attempted  an  examination  of  any  man's  writings." 
He  made  no  critical  estimate  of  any  of  the  great 
poets  contemporary  with  himself.  Even  of  the 
writers  he  admired  most,  the  early  seventeenth-cen- 
tury men,  he  has  left  no  careful  critical  study. 
Milton,  one  thinks,  is  the  English  poet  he  might 
have  discussed  with  most  sympathy  and  illumina- 
tion; but  he  has  no  criticism  on  Milton's  work 
except  two  or  three  fragments  of  little  value.  In 
his  professed  critical  papers,  as  in  the  biographical, 
he  is  on  the  hunt  for  something  recondite,  and  loses 

156 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY 

no  opportunity  to  start  a  train  of  ingenious  conjec- 
ture. He  overreaches  himself  by  his  own  subtlety, 
and  often  fails  in  the  first  requisite  of  the  critic,  a 
sympathetic  perception  of  the  central  quality  of  his 
author.  Acute  and  suggestive,  he  is  nevertheless 
always  liable  to  sacrifice  his  grasp  of  a  work  as  a 
whole  to  the  discussion  of  some  finicky  detail.  And 
occasionally  his  verdicts  are  simply  perverse  or 
freakish ;  the  essay  on  Pope  is  full  of  such. 

Moreover,  the  range  of  his  critical  appreciation 
was  sharply  limited.  He  was  as  insular  as  the  most 
hide-bound  Briton.  The  manners  of  all  the  Latin 
races,  he  says,  are  based  on  a  want  of  principle  and 
a  want  of  moral  sensibility.  He  never  would  admit 
that  anything  good  came  out  of  France.  In  speak- 
ing of  the  relations  of  French  and  English  literature 
he  declares  that  "no  section  whatever  of  French 
literature  has  ever  availed  to  influence  in  the  slight- 
est degree  or  to  modify  our  own";  a  statement  that 
betrays  either  such  ignorance  or  such  obstinate 
prejudice  as  to  discredit  whatever  he  has  to  say  of 
our  eighteenth-century  writers.  Nor  is  it  race 
prejudice  only  that  narrows  his  vision.  As  a  critic 
of  poetry,  he  was  deficient  in  the  sense  of  form,  and, 
in  spite  of  the  pretensions  of  his  own  prose-poetry, 
he  was  deficient  in  the  sense  of  rhythm.  The  music 
of  verse  appealed  to  him  only  when  it  was  organ- 
like,  Miltonic.  In  truth,  the  only  two  elements 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

in  literature  he  ever  really  cared  much  for  were  the 
mysterious  or  recondite,  and  the  sublime;  and  he 
liked  best  that  writing  in  which  the  two  were  some- 
how combined.  Those  masterpieces  of  literature 
which  depict  broad,  simple  action  from  obvious 
motives  had  no  interest  for  him.  He  lived  half  his 
life  in  Edinburgh;  but  I  find  no  positive  evidence 
that  he  ever  read  his  Walter  Scott.  Even  the  sub- 
lime he  did  not  appreciate  unless  there  were  some- 
thing grandiose  or  spectacular  in  it,  something 
more  properly  to  be  called  magnificent.  Milton 
he  thought  sublime;  Homer,  not  at  all.  I  doubt 
whether  he  thought  the  first  verse  of  the  first  chapter 
of  Genesis  sublime ;  I  can  imagine  what  a  rhetorical 
bravura  he  would  have  written  upon  it.  In  short, 
he  narrowed  greatly  the  range  of  his  criticism  by 
renouncing  at  once  half  the  material  out  of  which 
the  best  literature  must  be  wrought  —  the  lucid, 
obvious  truths  of  life;  and  then  by  holding  per- 
sistently to  a  conception  of  rhetoric  which  tended 
to  confound  art  with  artifice. 

But  it  is  in  the  second  of  the  three  groups  into 
which  all  De  Quincey's  writing  may  be  divided 
that  we  shall  find  the  work  that  he  himself  most 
prized,  and  that  is  probably  most  interesting  to 
readers  of  to-day.  Here  we  may  place  all  those 
passages  that  are  the  immediate  product  of  his 

158 


THOMAS  DE   QUINCEY 

imagination,  —  the  dreams  and  visions  of  the 
Confessions  and  the  Suspiria  de  Profundis  ;  the 
records  of  his  childhood  in  which  memory  passes 
so  insensibly  into  revery  that  he  cannot  tell  what 
was  fact  and  what  was  dream ;  narratives  like  those 
of  the  English  Mail  Coach,  in  which  the  story  is 
enveloped  in  an  atmosphere  half  feeling  and  half 
fancy;  and  those  Dream  Echoes  in  which  some 
of  the  intenser  moments  of  experience  repeated 
themselves  in  image  and  music.  This  visionary 
gift  was  not  due  chiefly  to  his  opium.  "Habitually 
to  dream  magnificently,"  he  says,  "a  man  must  have 
a  constitutional  determination  to  revery."  That  is 
what  De  Quincey  always  had.  He  was  a  dreamer 
by  nature.  His  imagination  loved  to  luxuriate  in 
vast,  dim-lighted  spaces,  in  vague  and  awesome 
revery.  He  himself  accounted  this  faculty  as  one 
of  our  most  precious  endowments,  and  lamented 
its  inevitable  decline  under  the  pressure  and  hurry  of 
our  material  age. 

"Let  no  man  think  this  a  trifle.  The  machinery 
for  dreaming  planted  in  the  human  brain  was  not 
planted  for  nothing.  That  faculty,  in  alliance  with 
the  mystery  of  darkness,  is  the  one  great  tube  through 
which  man  communicates  with  the  shadowy.  And 
the  dreaming  organ,  in  connection  with  the  heart, 
the  eye,  the  ear,  composes  the  magnificent  apparatus 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

which  forces  the  infinite  into  the  chambers  of  a 
human  brain,  and  throws  dark  reflections  from 
eternities  below  all  life  upon  the  mirrors  of  that 
mysterious  camera  obscura  —  the  sleeping  mind." 

The  Confessions,  he  averred,  were  written  origi- 
nally with  a  view  to  revealing  the  power  of 
dreaming  that  is  latent  in  every  man;  and  this 
mood  of  lofty  revery  recurs  frequently  throughout 
all  his  later  writing.  The  most  effective  passages 
of  this  sort  are  those  most  spontaneous,  when  the 
imagination  in  solemn  forms,  touched  with  some 
vague  melancholy,  rises  directly  out  of  some  deep 
or  intense  emotion;  like  that  hollow  Memnonian 
sound  heard  at  the  bedside  of  his  dead  sister,  or 
those  cloudy  visions  of  palm  trees  and  vanishing 
faces  in  the  far  vault  of  heaven  that  haunted  him 
after  his  sister  had  gone.  The  Dream  Echoes  and 
parts  of  the  Suspiria  are  more  artificial  and  hence 
less  impressive.  One  has  a  suspicion  that  De 
Quincey  is  forcing  his  mood  a  little  —  at  least 
inviting  it. 

It  is  these  more  studied  passages  that  best  exem- 
plify the  peculiar  literary  form  in  which,  by  striking 
imagery  and  especially  by  a  certain  imposing  rhythm, 
De  Quincey  attempted  to  secure  the  effects  of  poetry 
without  the  use  of  metre.  It  is  to  be  doubted,  how- 
ever, whether  the  attempt  is  altogether  successful, 

1 60 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY 

much  as  De  Quincey  prided  himself  upon  it.  Metre 
is  not  an  arbitrary  accompaniment  of  poetry,  a 
separable  ornament;  it  is  the  poet's  natural  voice. 
The  attempt,  therefore,  to  dispense  with  it,  while 
retaining  the  imagery  and  heightened  emotion  of 
poetry,  inevitably  produces  a  sense  of  artificiality. 
You  get  a  kind  of  bastard  product,  neither  prose  nor 
verse  and  without  the  charm  of  either  one.  There 
is,  moreover,  a  special  reason  why  such  passages 
as  these  should  be  in  verse.  It  seems  to  be  only  the 
musical  element  in  speech  that  can  lay  the  question- 
ing intellect  asleep  and  take  us  into  the  mood  of 
dream.  Surprise  —  which  is  a  sudden  shock  to 
reason  —  is  never  known  in  dreamland.  We  are 
terrified  there,  or  delighted  to  the  verge  of  ecstasy; 
but  nothing  seems  improbable  to  us  until  after  we 
have  waked.  It  is  in  such  a  temper,  if  I  mistake 
not,  that  we  read  Shakespeare's  Midsummer-Night's 
Dream  or  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner.  And  the 
effect  in  either  case  would  be  impossible  without 
the  exquisite  music  of  the  verse  which  enchants  us 
and  deludes.  But  De  Quincey's  Dream  Echoes 
hardly  produce  any  such  sense  of  illusion.  They 
lay  no  spell  upon  our  reason.  They  are  evidently 
composed.  De  Quincey  says,  "Go  to,  I  will  now 
dream  dreams."  We  see  how  he  does  it;  he  is 
making  a  revery. 

From  such  strictures  one  passage  must  be  excepted, 
M  161 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

—  and  it  is  a  great  exception,  —  the  vision  of  the 
"Three  Ladies  of  Sorrow."  Cut  away  the  intro- 
ductory paragraphs  about  Levana  and  the  needless 
paragraph  of  personal  application  at  the  end,  cut 
away  the  rubbishy  footnotes,  and  you  leave  these 
three  figures  standing  sad  and  stately  in  our  imagina- 
tion. This  is  not  a  dream  begotten  of  opium  upon 
idle  fancy;  here  the  imagination  of  De  Quincey 
has  wrought  upon  the  deepest  experiences  of  universal 
humanity.  These  three  —  Mater  Lachrymarum, 
Mater  Suspiriorum,  Mater  Tenebrarum  —  they 
may  not  yet  have  crossed  our  path,  we  may  not  yet 
have  heard  their  voice;  but  some  glimpse  as  from 
a  distance,  some  shadow  of  their  awful  forms,  every 
son  of  man  has  known  or  some  day  shall  know. 
As  has  been  truly  said,  they  are  an  addition  to  the 
mythology  of  the  human  race,  as  solemn  as  the 
Fates  or  the  Furies.  But  nowhere  else  has  De 
Quincey  done  anything  quite  like  this. 

But  after  all,  perhaps  there  is  nothing  in  the  whole 
body  of  De  Quincey's  work  more  valuable  than 
his  rambling  papers  of  personal  reminiscence;  and 
there  is  pretty  certainly  nothing  more  diverting.  It 
is  to  them  we  must  look  for  a  series  of  intimate 
portraits  of  some  of  his  most  important  contempo- 
raries, in  their  habit  as  they  lived.  The  shy  and 
retiring  little  man  loved  to  study  his  friends  in  the 
homely  circumstance  of  their  daily  life,  divested  of 
162 


THOMAS  DE   QUINCEY 

their  robes  of  state  or  of  song.  He  had  an  almost 
feminine  nicety  of  observation  that  nothing  escaped, 
and  a  quick  eye  for  those  slight  peculiarities  of 
appearance  and  manner  in  which  character  uncon- 
sciously reveals  itself.  Without  his  Recollections  our 
picture  of  the  group  of  poets  in  the  Lake  District 
would  lose  almost  all  its  vivid  details.  It  is  gossip, 
to  be  sure,  but  the  gossip  of  a  scholar  and  a  thinker, 
who  sees  the  significance  of  what  to  others  would 
seem  trifles.  Doubtless  the  naive  frankness  with 
which  he  put  his  gossip  into  print  was  sometimes 
sufficiently  annoying  to  the  subjects  of  it.  For  he 
could  now  and  then  descend  to  mere  tittle-tattle, 
flavored  with  a  little  half-conscious  personal  malice. 
Like  Mr.  Boswell,  De  Quincey  would  probably 
have  declared  himself  unwilling  to  "mitigate  the 
asperity  of  his  portraits"  to  please  anybody;  yet 
I  suspect  it  was  not  solely  to  his  pure  love  of  truth 
that  we  owe  the  information  that  Mr.  Wordsworth 
had  bad  legs  and  drooping  shoulders;  that  there 
was  a  curious  variation  in  the  brilliancy  of  his  eyes, 
due  probably  to  the  condition  of  his  stomach;  that 
he  was  constitutionally  so  rigid  of  nature  that  people 
wondered  how  he  could  ever  have  condescended  to 
the  humiliations  of  courtship;  that  in  Mrs.  Words- 
worth's eyes  —  those  "stars  of  twilight  fair"  —  there 
was  considerable  obliquity  of  vision,  which  ought  to 
have  been  repulsive  and  yet  was  not ;  that  Dorothy 

163 


A   GROUP  OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Wordsworth  had  refused  several  offers  of  marriage, 
one,  to  his  personal  knowledge,  from  Hazlitt  (which 
probably  was  not  the  fact)  —  and  much  other  matter 
of  this  sort,  perhaps  beneath  the  dignity  of  full- 
dress  biography.  It  is  likely,  however,  that  such 
details,  though  doubtless  censured  by  our  superior 
sense  of  propriety,  add  to  our  interest  in  De  Quincey's 
story.  Of  course  it  was  wrong  of  him;  but  our 
human  curiosity  often  enjoys  what  our  more  rigid 
judgment  may  not  approve.  And  what  a  thoroughly 
human,  lifelike  picture  it  is !  There  was  a  Words- 
worth the  Stamp  Distributor  as  well  as  a  Wordsworth 
the  Poet;  and  I,  for  one,  am  glad  to  know  both. 
As  to  Dorothy  Wordsworth,  the  most  genuinely 
poetic  character  in  the  group,  De  Quincey's  account 
of  her  is  worth  all  the  rest  that  has  been  written  of 
her.  And  Coleridge,  to  whom  he  was  never  quite 
so  just,  Southey,  Wilson,  Charles  Lloyd,  the  Simpsons, 
and  the  rest,  they  are  all  real  and  living  in  his  gar- 
rulous page. 

One  closes  an  essay  on  De  Quincey  with  some  mis- 
givings as  to  its  justice.  But  a  critic  may  plead,  in 
excuse  for  his  imperfect  appreciation,  that  there 
are  few  writers  of  whom  a  just  estimate  is  so  diffi- 
cult. Few  have  put  so  much  thinking  into  their 
work  to  so  little  purpose.  He  is  certainly  very  full 
of  matter.  What  he  might  have  accomplished  if  the 
subtle  spirit  of  opium  that  colored  his  dreams  had 

164 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY 

not  robbed  him  of  the  power  of  systematic  and  fruit- 
ful thinking,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  As  it  was,  he 
had  no  message  to  deliver;  he  did  not  influence  in 
any  wise  the  thought  of  his  age;  he  left  no  work  in 
which  vital  truth  takes  on  finished  shape,  or  any  of 
the  great  forces  of  life  are  presented  in  the  forms  of 
a  healthy  imagination.  I  should  hold,  therefore, 
that,  while  he  was  a  most  curious  personality  and 
a  very  remarkable  writer,  he  can  hardly  rank  with 
such  masters  of  modern  prose  as  Thomas  Carlyle 
and  John  Ruskin. 


JOHN  WILSON 
I 

DE  QUINCEY,  in  his  delightful  recollections  of 
the  English  lakes,  relates  that  one  night,  about 
three  hours  past  midnight,  a  young  man,  as  yet 
pretty  nearly  a  stranger  to  the  Lake  Country,  —  but 
I  suppose  it  was  the  Opium-Eater  himself,  mooning 
about  after  this  custom,  —  had  strolled  up  to  White 
Moss  Common  above  Grasmere  Lake,  when  he  was 
startled  by  a  wild  bull  that  came  puffing  and  labor- 
ing up  the  mountain  road.  A  moment  later  there 
appeared  in  chase  three  horsemen,  and  the  bull 
turned  and  plunged  down  to  the  marshy  ground  at 
the  head  of  the  lake,  but  soon  dislodged  thence, 
came  forging  up  the  hill  again.  The  leading  horse- 
man, a  towering  figure  crowned  by  a  flood  of  yellow 
hair,  and  grasping  a  wooden  spear  fourteen  feet  long, 
now  shouted,  "Turn  that  villain,  turn  that  villain, 
or  he  will  take  to  Cumberland !"  De  Quincey 
turned  the  bull,  —  or  says  he  did ;  I  always  have  had 
my  doubts  about  that,  —  and  the  cavalcade  rushed 
past  in  the  dim  light  of  the  morning,  leaving  him 

1 66 


JOHN   WILSON 

wondering    whether    they    were    not    creatures    of 
vision  and  dream. 

This,  if  I  am  right  in  thinking  the  "young  man" 
of  the  story  to  be  De  Quincey  himself,  was  his  first 
meeting  with  John  Wilson.  It  was  a  very  char- 
acteristic one;  John  Wilson  was  usually  on  some 
high  horse,  and  riding  at  a  reckless  pace.  Only 
about  a  year  before,  in  1807,  twenty-two  years  of  age 
and  just  out  of  the  University,  he  had  come  to  live 
at  Elleray  on  Lake  Windermere.  He  had  made  a 
record  for  brilliant  though  desultory  scholarship 
in  Oxford,  had  inherited  from  his  father  a  handsome 
fortune,  had  more  health  and  high  spirits  than  he 
knew  what  to  do  with,  and  so  now,  with  no  very 
definite  purpose  or  career  in  mind,  he  selected  one  of 
the  loveliest  spots  in  England  and  sat  himself  down  to 
enjoy  the  goods  of  life.  Few  men  ever  had  a  keener 
relish  for  all  the  healthy  pleasures  of  a  rational 
animal.  A  goodly  man  to  look  upon.  Standing 
full  six  feet,  broad-chested,  sinewy;  shaking  back 
from  his  massive  forehead  his  dishevelled  mane  of 
tawny  hair;  a  resonant  voice  and  a  resistless  vigor 
in  his  movements,  —  he  seemed  a  big,  good-natured 
Goth.  At  the  University  he  was  remembered  for 
his  prowess  and  a  certain  genial  impudence  rather 
than  for  any  more  distinctively  academic  attainments. 
He  had  measured  twenty-three  feet  in  a  running 
jump;  after  a  dinner  in  London  one  night  he  had 

167 


A   GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

covered  the  fifty-nine  miles  back  to  the  college  in 
nine  hours ;  he  had  knocked  out  the  toughest  pugi- 
list in  Oxford.  Here  in  his  life  at  Elleray  as  a 
country  gentleman,  he  prided  himself  on  keeping  all 
his  manly  accomplishments  well  in  practice.  "A 
fine,  gay,  girt-hearted  fellow,"  said  one  of  his  rustic 
neighbors,  "as  strang  as  a  lion,  and  as  lish  as  a 
trout,  an'  he  had  sic  antics  as  never  man  had." 

But  he  was  a  very  soft-hearted  giant,  whose  exu- 
berant sentiment  was  always  running  over  into 
sentimentality.  From  his  earliest  manhood  his 
emotions  were  effusive  rather  than  steady,  and  his 
actions  were  largely  decided  by  impulse.  During 
his  first  college  year  he  had  formed  an  attachment 
for  a  certain  Margaret,  which  seems  to  have  been 
genuinely  impassioned  and  lasted  some  seven  years. 
But  his  mother,  for  some  unexplained  reason,  was 
unalterably  opposed  to  their  union;  and  Wilson, 
like  Gibbon,  sighed  as  a  lover  and  obeyed  as  a  son. 
Which  would  seem  to  indicate,  either  that  the 
mother  had  an  unusually  strong  will,  or  the  son  an 
unusually  weak  one;  it  probably  indicates  both. 
Wilson  certainly  sighed  a  good  deal ;  memory  of  his 
early  passion  frequently  gives  a  sentimental  tinge  to 
his  later  writing  —  especially  in  the  paper  entitled 
Streams.  But  not  long  after  taking  up  residence  at 
Elleray,  he  met  a  high-spirited  girl,  the  belle  of  the 
Lake  District,  of  a  temperament  well  fitted  to 

1 68 


JOHN   WILSON 

sympathize  with  his  own.  John  Wilson  and  Jane 
Penny  were  married  in  1811,  and  their  domestic 
life  for  twenty-five  years  exhibits  all  that  is  best  in 
Wilson's  character. 

These  early  years  at  the  lakes,  however,  gave 
little  promise  of  public  work  of  any  sort.  He  had 
cherished  since  his  college  days  some  literary  aspira- 
tions, and  chose  his  residence  at  Elleray  partly  on 
account  of  the  neighborhood  of  Wordsworth, 
Southey,  and  Coleridge.  The  year  after  his  marriage 
he  published  a  thin  volume  of  dilute,  sentimental 
verse,  which  most  readers  to-day  will  pronounce 
hardly  worth  while.  But  the  life  at  Elleray  was  too 
full  and  satisfying  to  admit  any  strenuous  ambitions ; 
it  was  only  a  lucky  stroke  of  misfortune  that  threw 
him  upon  his  own  resources  and  forced  him  to  show 
what  stuff  there  was  in  him.  In  1815,  through  the 
mismanagement  or  treachery  of  a  friend,  he  lost 
practically  the  whole  of  his  fortune.  The  blow, 
however,  was  not  crushing;  his  mother,  whose  for- 
tune was  not  impaired,  was  living  in  her  own  house 
in  Edinburgh,  and  invited  her  son  with  his  family 
to  take  up  residence  with  her.  Wilson  accepted 
the  invitation,  and  the  same  year  was  called  to  the 
bar.  His  legal  experience  was  neither  very  extended 
nor  very  remunerative;  but  his  year  and  a  half  of 
"walking  the  Parliament  House"  served  to  bring 
him  into  acquaintance  with  a  little  group  of  young 

169 


A    GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Edinburgh  men,  one  of  whom  was  that  brilliant 
and  audacious  genius  soon  to  be  associated  with  him 
in  the  decisive  work  of  his  life,  John  Gibson  Lock- 
hart. 

Another  of  Wilson's  new  acquaintances  was  young 
William  Blackwood,  whose  handsome  new  shop  in 
Princess  Street  was  just  then  a  favorite  resort  of 
bookish  people.  Mr.  Blackwood  was  a  man  of 
energy  and  ideas.  He  had  succeeded  in  building 
up  a  prosperous  business  as  a  bookseller,  and  he 
was  Edinburgh  agent  for  the  great  Mr.  John  Murray 
of  London;  but  his  ventures  as  a  publisher  thus 
far  had  not  been  so  successful.  His  rival,  Constable, 
had  captured  the  two  most  famous  publications 
of  the  early  century,  the  Edinburgh  Review  and  the 
Waverley  Novels.  Nothing  daunted,  however,  Black- 
wood  risked  a  new  venture.  He  determined  to  have 
a  periodical  of  his  own,  Tory  in  politics  to  match  the 
Whig  Edinburgh.  He  wisely  decided  not  to  com- 
pete with  the  Edinburgh  in  its  own  field,  but  to 
make  his  periodical  a  magazine  rather  than  a  re- 
view, inviting  the  ablest  and  most  brilliant  contrib- 
utors, but  admitting  a  wider  variety  of  composition 
and  more  vivacity  of  treatment  than  would  be  appro- 
priate in  the  staider  pages  of  a  review.  Unfortu- 
nately, he  at  first  accepted  as  editors  two  men  quite 
incompetent  to  realize  his  ideal,  who,  much  to  his 
vexation,  termed  his  ambitious  magazine  "our 

170 


JOHN   WILSON 

humble  miscellany, "  and  filled  up  its  early  numbers 
with  dull  rubbish.  Mr.  Blackwood  stood  it  for 
six  months,  when  he  dismissed  the  incapables,  took 
the  magazine  into  his  own  hands,  and  looked  about 
for  some  better  editors.  The  two  young  fellows, 
Wilson  and  Lockhart,  had  been  in  his  shop  almost 
daily  for  a  year,  and  he  had  observed  their  rampant 
Toryism,  their  brilliant  talk,  their  wide  acquaintance 
with  books  and  men.  He  determined  to  secure 
their  services  for  his  enterprise,  and  while  retaining 
general  supervision  of  the  magazine  himself,  to 
intrust  to  them  all  details  of  its  editorial  conduct. 

In  October,  1817,  appeared  the  first  number  under 
the  new  management,  the  seventh  of  the  series,  but 
the  first  real  BlackwoocPs  Magazine.  It  came  upon 
the  decorum  of  Edinburgh  like  a  thunderclap  out  of 
a  clear  sky.  The  public,  that  for  six  months  had 
found  in  Mr.  Blackwood's  innocent  periodical  little 
more  exciting  than  the  price  of  pigs  and  poultry, 
was  surprised  to  see  this  harmless  thing  changed  into 
the  most  audacious  of  journals,  that  scattered  per- 
sonalities right  and  left  and  had  no  fear  of  dignities. 
Edinburgh  society  was  especially  scandalized  by 
the  last  article  in  the  number.  Few  people  nowa- 
days know  or  care  anything  about  this  once  famous 
"Chaldee  Manuscript";  but  seldom  has  any  fugi- 
tive magazine  article  created  such  a  commotion.  It 
was  a  satirical  account  of  Blackwood's  quarrel  with 
171 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

his  first  editors  and  of  his  rivalry  with  Constable 
and  the  Edinburgh;  and  it  introduces  under  a  thin 
disguise  not  only  Blackwood  and  his  editors,  old  and 
new,  but  Constable,  Jeffrey,  Walter  Scott,  and  a 
number  of  other  prominent  persons  in  the  little 
world  of  Edinburgh  society.  It  is  doubtless  a 
clever  skit,  but  its  humor  —  which  is  said  to  have 
convulsed  Scott  with  laughter  —  will  hardly  prove 
irresistible  to  the  modern  reader.  Its  allusions  are 
purely  local,  and  could  not  have  been  understood 
outside  the  little  circle  of  Edinburgh.  The  paper  is 
a  curious  proof  at  once  of  the  purely  provincial 
character  of  Edinburgh  literary  society,  and  of  the 
spirit  of  local  mischief,  of  a  pure  lark,  rather  than  of 
serious  literary  endeavor,  with  which  these  young 
fellows  entered  upon  the  new  enterprise  of  edit- 
ing a  magazine.  The  reader  of  to-day,  moreover, 
will  be  puzzled  to  know  why  it  should  have  ruffled 
the  proprieties  so  much.  Its  satirical  use  of  Scrip- 
ture phrase  probably  displeased  some  good  folk, 
and  it  certainly  treated  the  big-wigs  of  Edinburgh 
with  considerable  levity;  but  there  is  nothing  really 
profane  in  it,  nor  are  its  personalities  of  a  sort,  one 
thinks,  to  give  serious  offence.  But  in  deference  to 
public  sentiment  it  was  withdrawn,  —  after  it  had 
sold  off  the  first  edition  of  the  magazine,  —  and  is 
not  now  to  be  found  in  most  sets  of  Blackwood. 
In  fact,  there  were  much  worse  things  than  the 

172 


JOHN   WILSON 

"  Chaldee  Manuscript "  in  this  first  number  of  Black- 
wood.  The  opening  paper  is  a  review  of  Coleridge's 
Biographia  Liter  aria,  probably  written  by  Wilson. 
It  has  the  boisterous  manner  and  reckless  epithet 
always  too  characteristic  of  his  critical  writing. 
The  paper  misses  altogether  the  wealth  of  critical 
principle  contained  in  this  certainly  rather  form- 
less book,  and  is  throughout  only  a  vulgar,  derisive 
attack  upon  Coleridge  himself.  The  author  of  the 
Ancient  Mariner,  so  the  critic  avers,  has  written 
nothing  worthy  of  remembrance  save  a  few  wild 
and  fanciful  ballads,  yet  he  is  "so  puffed  up  with  a 
miserable  arrogance"  that  he  seems  to  consider  the 
mighty  universe  itself  "nothing  better  than  a  mirror 
in  which,  with  a  grinning  and  idiotic  self-compla- 
cency, he  may  contemplate  the  physiognomy  of 
Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge."  There  are  twenty 
pages  of  such  stuff  as  this,  written,  as  the  critic  avers 
with  a  pious  smirk,  not  in  the  cause  of  literature 
merely,  but  in  the  cause  of  morality  and  religion, 
lest  Mr.  Coleridge  should  be  held  up  as  a  model  to 
the  coming  generation.  Later  on  in  the  same  num- 
ber is  the  first  of  that  notorious  series  of  articles 
on  "The  Cockney  School  of  Poets,"  the  author- 
ship of  which  has  never  been  definitely  determined, 
but  which  were  probably  written  in  part  by  Wilson, 
in  part  by  Lockhart,  and  in  part,  also,  by  that  swash- 
buckling Irishman,  William  Maginn.  The  worst 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

of  them,  the  infamous  paper  on  Keats,  was  published 
in  August  of  the  next  year;  but  they  are  all  filled 
with  violent  personalities,  and  as  literary  criticism 
are  practically  worthless. 

The  utmost  that  can  be  said  for  much  of  the 
writing  in  the  early  volumes  of  Blackwood  is  that  it 
was  prompted  by  a  certain  boyish  hilarity  rather 
than  by  any  real  malignity.  Determined  above  all 
things  that  their  magazine  should  not  be  dull,  the 
two  young  editors  laid  about  them  recklessly,  with 
very  little  regard  for  precision  or  propriety.  They 
were  always  ready  for  a  fight  or  a  frolic,  and  liked 
best  some  combination  of  the  two.  Mr.  Blackwood, 
repeatedly  threatened  by  suits  for  libel,  tried  now  and 
then  to  put  some  check  upon  his  riotous  team;  but 
he  was  gratified  to  see  his  magazine  making  a  stir 
in  the  world,  and  usually  gave  them  free  rein.  For 
some  eight  years  the  practical  conduct  of  the  maga- 
zine was  in  their  hands.  In  1822  they  began  that 
famous  series  of  papers  in  dialogue,  the  Nodes 
Ambrosian(By  which  contains  Wilson's  best  work.  It  is 
not  certain  which  of  the  two  men  is  to  be  credited 
with  the  original  conception;  they  seem  to  have 
contributed  about  equally  to  the  earlier  numbers, 
sometimes  writing  together  and  sometimes  separately. 
Some  assistance,  though  probably  not  much,  was 
given  by  James  Hogg,  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  and 
Maginn — who  figuresas  O'Doherty — seems  to  have 


JOHN   WILSON 

had  some  part  in  a  few  of  the  more  hilarious  papers. 
But  from  first  to  last  the  real  author  of  the  Nodes 
was  Wilson.  Lockhart  was  never  a  jovial  or  even 
a  genial  man ;  there  was  too  much  gall  in  his  humor 
—  "the  scorpion  that  stings  the  faces  of  men,"  as 
he  was  well  characterized  in  the  "Chaldee  Manu- 
script"; but  Wilson's  exuberant  spirits,  his  effusive 
comradeship,  his  profuse  sentimental  rhetoric,  all 
chimed  exactly  with  the  temper  of  the  Nodes.  After 
1820,  Lockhart's  intimate  relations  writh  Scott  — 
whose  daughter  he  had  married  —  drew  him  some- 
what away  from  the  magazine;  and  in  1825  he  went 
to  London  to  assume  editorial  control  of  the  Quar- 
terly Review,  and  left  the  conduct  of  Blackwood's 
entirely  to  Wilson.  For  the  next  ten  years  it  was 
Wilson's  magazine.  He  decided  what  contributors 
should  be  admitted,  and  he  put  in  whatever  of  his 
own  he  wished.  His  biographer  gives  a  list  of  two 
hundred  and  thirty-nine  articles  written  by  him  in 
these  ten  years,  aggregating  about  four  thousand 
pages. 

With  all  his  editorial  work  Wilson  had  given 
much  time,  since  1820,  to  the  duties  of  another 
position,  that,  one  thinks,  should  have  called  for 
more  dignity  than  the  young  fellows  in  Mr.  Black- 
wood's  editorial  rooms  were  accustomed  to  wear. 
In  that  year  he  offered  himself  as  a  candidate  for  the 
professorship  of  moral  philosophy  in  Edinburgh 


A    GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

University.  The  chair  had  been  occupied  by  such 
eminent  Scottish  philosophers  as  Dugald  Stewart  and 
Thomas  Brown.  Wilson's  rival  in  the  candidacy 
was  Sir  William  Hamilton,  who  had  almost  every 
qualification  for  the  place,  while  Wilson,  to  say  the 
truth,  had  almost  none.  He  was,  moreover,  known 
to  be  the  leading  spirit  in  the  conduct  of  the  periodical 
that  for  nearly  three  years  had  scandalized  grave 
Edinburgh  folk  by  its  boisterousness  and  its  auda- 
cious personalities.  But  the  election  was  a  partisan 
affair,  and  Wilson  won,  as  a  Tory  —  with  "influ- 
ence." He  occupied  the  chair  until  1852,  two 
years  before  his  death.  He  was  an  entertaining,  some- 
times an  eloquent,  lecturer,  and  the  charm  of  his 
personality  made  him  popular  in  the  class  room,  as 
everywhere  else;  but  it  cannot  be  said  that,  either 
by  speculation  or  research,  he  ever  much  widened  the 
bounds  of  knowledge  in  his  department.  His  first 
interest  was  always  in  literature;  and  although  he 
lectured  for  more  than  thirty  years,  he  never  cared 
enough  for  his  lectures  to  print  anything  from  them, 
save  some  few  papers  in  the  Blackwood,  most  of  these 
not  of  sufficient  importance  to  be  included  in  the 
collected  edition  of  his  works. 

The  income  from  his  professorship,  together  with 
the  liberal  payments  from  Mr.  Blackwood,  soon 
placed  him  beyond  financial  anxiety.  His  estate 
at  Elleray  he  had  never  sold,  and  after  1823  he  was 

176 


JOHN    WILSON 

able  to  spend  his  summers  there  regularly,  with  his 
family  about  him.  He  genuinely  loved  the  country; 
only  twice  in  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life  did  he  go 
up  to  London.  It  is  at  Elleray  that  one  likes  best 
to  picture  him,  in  his  later  as  well  as  in  his  earlier 
years  —  under  the  great  sycamore  that  still  spreads 
its  venerable  arms  over  the  little  cottage  that  had  been 
his  first  and  best-loved  home  there,  watching  his 
game-cocks  and  rollicking  with  his  dogs,  rowing  on 
the  lake  or  racing  up  the  hill  behind  it  with  a  crowd 
of  shouting  children  to  watch  the  long  panorama 
of  cloud  and  mountain  from  Orrest  Head  ;  striding 
with  giant  pace  over  the  road  to  Rydal  to  look  in  upon 
Wordsworth  or  upon  that  best-beloved  of  all  the 
Lakers,  little  Hartley  Coleridge,  at  the  Nab ;  joining 
with  the  lusty  rustics  in  the  annual  Grasmere  sports, 
and  proving  himself  still  in  the  wrestling  "a  verra 
hard  un  to  lick  " ;  keeping  the  gamesome  spirits  of 
youth  quite  down  to  the  verge  of  age.  He  liked  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  active  men,  and  used  to  say 
he  thanked  God  he  had  never  lost  his  taste  for  bad 
company.  The  homely  folk  of  the  Lake  Country, 
who  only  knew  Wordsworth  as  an  odd  party  who 
made  verses,  knew  John  Wilson  as  a  "gert,  good 
feller."  His  memory  is  still  green  in  all  the  Winder- 
mere  region. 

The  current  of  this  joyous  life  flowed  unbroken 
till  his  wife  died  suddenly  in  1837.     He  was  never 
N  177 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

the  same  man  after  that.  His  connection  with  the 
magazine  had  not  been  so  close  since  the  death  of 
the  elder  Blackwood,  in  1835,  and  his  contributions, 
though  they  continued  till  the  very  last  year  of  his 
life,  now  became  much  less  frequent.  Something 
of  the  pathos  of  age  was  coming  over  him.  Elleray 
he  found  too  lonely  for  summer  residence.  His 
children  married,  and  though  still  living  near 
him,  went  out  of  his  Edinburgh  home.  He  was 
still  the  big,  leonine  man,  but  his  temper  was  mel- 
lowed very  much.  It  is  true  he  would  never  quite 
give  up  his  pet  aversions;  he  could  write  of  Keats 
with  unrepentant  vulgarity  years  after  Keats  had 
gone,  and  could  jeer  at  Hazlitt  in  the  old  bitter 
fashion.  Yet  the  widening  of  the  circle  of  his 
personal  acquaintance  to  include  many  of  his  old  ad- 
versaries, and  the  certainty  that  the  measures  he  had 
opposed  were  not  working  disaster  to  the  state,  com- 
bined with  the  natural  effect  of  age  and  sorrows  to 
soften  the  asperity  of  his  opinions  and  make  him 
more  tolerant  and  gentle.  His  one  immortal  sen- 
tence is  characteristic  of  those  latest  years:  "The 
animosities  are  mortal,  but  the  humanities  live  for- 
ever."  His  health,  which  he  had  doubtless  drawn 
on  rather  heavily,  hardly  fulfilled  the  extravagant 
promise  of  his  youth.  In  1852  he  was  forced  by 
growing  weakness  to  resign  his  chair,  and  two  years 
later  he  died,  cheerful,  if  not  buoyant,  to  the  last. 

178 


JOHN    WILSON 

It  was  shortly  before  his  death  that  he  met,  after 
long  absence,  his  old  associate  Lockhart,  now, 
like  himself,  pathetically  broken  by  sorrows  and 
bereavement,  and,  unlike  Wilson,  embittered  and 
cynical,  " a  weary  old  man,"  as  he  said,  "fit  now  for 
nothing  but  to  shut  myself  up  and  be  sulky."  Four 
months  later  he  followed  his  friend.  Little,  withered 
Mr.  De  Quincey,  who  for  half  a  century  had  kept 
his  system  in  a  pickle  of  laudanum,  though  born  in 
the  same  year  as  Wilson,  outlived  him  five  years, 
dying  at  the  riper  age  of  seventy-four. 

II 

If  we  would  estimate  the  literary  work  of  Wilson, 
we  must  credit  him,  first  of  all,  with  having  found 
out  how  to  edit  a  magazine.  For  the  instant  success 
of  Blackwood's,  as  well  as  its  continued  prosperity 
for  more  than  twenty  years,  was  due  more  largely 
to  Wilson  than  to  Lockhart.  There  is  doubtless 
more  finish  in  Lockharfs  work ;  his  keen  and  caustic 
satire  is  cruelly  effective,  and  he  was,  I  think,  an 
abler  critic  than  Wilson.  But  Wilson  had  a  more 
intimate  sympathy  with  his  readers,  a  quicker  sense 
of  what  would  interest  or  amuse  them  at  the  moment; 
and  above  all  he  had  an  exuberant  vitality,  an 
immense  volume  of  good  spirits  that  seemed  to  per- 
vade the  magazine.  He  may  almost  be  said  to  have 
179 


A   GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

introduced  a  new  style  into  English  periodical 
writing ;  he  shocked  the  proprieties  hardly  more  by 
his  matter  than  by  his  manner.  His  style  is  collo- 
quial to  the  last  degree;  it  is  the  man  himself.  The 
personal  note  is  dominant,  to  be  sure,  in  all  the  essay- 
ists of  the  period;  but  the  others,  Hazlitt,  Lamb, 
De  Quincey,  as  we  have  seen,  recognized  literary 
standards,  admired  and  imitated  certain  literary 
models.  Wilson,  on  the  other  hand,  simply  let 
himself  go.  He  is  sentimental,  or  abusive,  or  hilari- 
ous, as  the  mood  takes  him ;  but  he  is  always  rhetor- 
ical, profuse,  careless  of  decorum.  Of  course  in 
such  writing  you  will  not  expect  nicety  of  judgment, 
chasteness  or  precision  of  phrase.  Wilson  writes 
as  the  traditional  Irishman  played  the  violin,  "by 
main  strength."  But  there  is  great  personal  force 
in  such  a  manner;  it  is  big  John  Wilson  talking, 
declaiming,  jesting,  shouting  from  the  page.  The 
unpardonable  sin  in  the  columns  of  a  magazine  is 
dulness;  and  Wilson  is  never  dull. 

As  to  the  permanent  literary  value  of  his  work, 
that  is  another  matter.  For  one  thing  it  was  usually 
done  in  too  much  haste  to  be  lasting.  Acting  on 
the  convenient  motto,  "Never  do  to-day  what  you 
can  put  off  till  to-morrow,"  he  would  postpone  his 
writing  to  the  last  moment,  and  then,  locking  him- 
self in  his  study,  turn  off  sheet  after  sheet,  with  amaz- 
ing rapidity,  sometimes  writing  a  whole  number  of 

1 80 


JOHN   WILSON 

the  Nodes  at  a  sitting.  His  biographer  says  he  once 
wrote  fifty-six  double-column  pages  of  print  for 
Blackwood? s  in  forty-eight  hours.  But  it  is  art  that 
tells  in  the  long  run;  extempore  writing  thrown  off 
at  such  a  dizzy  rate  could  not  have  received  much 
artistic  care.  Such  a  rush  of  manner,  though  it  may 
carry  you  away  at  the  moment,  is  likely  to  weary 
after  a  little.  We  crave  some  repose,  some  tem- 
perance of  feeling,  delicacy  of  sentiment.  The 
very  qualities  that  gave  its  buoyancy  to  this  writing 
at  the  time  are  peculiarly  liable  to  evaporate  in  the 
course  of  a  century.  The  effervescent  humor  has 
lost  its  bubble  now,  and  tastes  a  little  flat  on  the 
palate.  A  style  so  highly  exhilarated  doesn't  keep 
well.  And  what  is  worse,  this  exaggerated  animation 
suggests  something  factitious;  we  suspect  it  to  be 
got  up  to  order,  like  the  devotional  moods  some 
pious  people  induce  by  rubbing  their  hands  together. 
The  man,  we  say,  makes  too  much  fuss  over  expres- 
sion, and  although  going  at  full  speed,  doesn't  seem 
to  get  on.  Nor  is  it  only  his  form  that  suffers; 
his  opinions  are  often  ill-considered,  his  critical 
verdicts  hasty  and  sometimes  contradictory,  his 
rough-and-ready  censure  of  men  and  measures  rash 
and  indiscriminate.  His  energy  has  too  little  intel- 
lectual quality;  it  often  seems  nothing  but  the 
expression  of  a  full  and  healthy  physical  life.  We 
shall  have  to  admit  that  in  all  respects  Wilson  was 

181 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

a  good  deal  of  a  Philistine.  I  should  like  to  have 
heard  the  late  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  express  his  opinion 
of  him  —  and  I  should  like  to  have  heard  him  express 
his  opinion  of  the  late  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold.  The 
amenity,  the  fine  reserve,  the  urbane  superiority, 
the  distrust  of  enthusiasms,  the  aversion  for  the  raw 
and  the  hasty  —  all  those  qualities  that  went  to  the 
making  of  our  great  critic  would  have  been  shocked 
by  every  page  that  Wilson  ever  wrote.  One  can 
imagine,  for  example,  Arnold's  fine  contempt  for  the 
horse-play  of  this  passage  in  which  Wilson  is  com- 
menting on  that  amazing  critical  opinion  of  Jeffrey's 
—  quoted  on  a  previous  page  —  which  puts  Rogers 
and  Campbell  above  all  their  contemporaries :  — 

"  Two  living  poets,  however,  it  seems  there  are  who, 
according  to  Mr.  Jeffrey,  are  never  to  be  dead  ones  — 
two  who  are  unforgettable,  and  who  owe  their  immor- 
tality, —  to  what,  think  ye  ?  —  their  elegance  !  That 
gracilis  puer,  Samuel  Rogers,  is  one  of  the  dual 
number.  His  perfect  beauties  will  never  be  brought 
to  decay  in  the  eyes  of  an  enamoured  world.  He  is 
so  polished  that  time  can  never  take  the  shine  out 
of  him;  so  classically  correct  are  his  charms  that  to 
the  end  of  time  they  will  be  among  the  principal 
Pleasures  of  Memory.  Jacqueline  in  her  immortal 
loveliness  seeming  Juno,  Minerva,  and  Venus  all 
in  one,  will  shed  in  vain  '  such  tears  as  angels  weep  ' 

182 


JOHN   WILSON 

over  the  weeds  that  have  in  truth  '  no  business  there  ' 
on  the  forgotten  grave  of  Childe  Harold!  Very 
like  a  whale !  Thomas  Campbell  is  the  other  pet- 
poet  —  the  last  of  all  the  flock.  Ay  —  he,  we  allow, 
is  a  star  that  will  know  no  setting;  but  of  this  we 
can  assure  the  whole  world,  not  excluding  Mr. 
Jeffrey,  that  were  Mr.  Campbell's  soul  deified,  and  a 
star  in  the  sky,  and  told  by  Apollo,  who  placed  him 
in  the  blue  region,  that  Scott  and  Byron  were  both 
buried  somewhere  between  the  Devil  and  the  Deep 
Sea,  he,  the  author  of  "Lochiel's  Warning,"  would 
either  leap  from  heaven  in  disdain,  or  insist  on  there 
being  instanter  one  triple  constellation.  What  to 
do  with  his  friend  Rogers,  it  might  not  be  easy  for 
Mr.  Campbell  to  imagine  or  propose  at  such  a  criti- 
cal juncture;  but  we  think  it  probable  that  he  would 
hint  to  Apollo,  on  the  appearance  of  his  Lordship 
and  the  Baronet,  that  the  Banker,  with  a  few  other 
pretty  poets,  might  be  permitted  to  scintillate  away 
to  all  eternity  as  their  —  tail!" 

Not  unamusing,  and  very  characteristic  of  Wilson 
in  its  contempt  for  mere  elegance;  but  it  hardly 
has  that  high  seriousness  Mr.  Arnold  used  to  exact 
of  the  critic. 

But  the  most  serious  discount  from  the  permanent 

value  of  Wilson's  work  is  the  lack  of  any  central 

purpose.     The  great  masters  of  prose,  Burke,  Car- 

lyle,  Newman,  Ruskin,  Arnold,  even  the  novelists 

183 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

as  Thackeray  and  George  Eliot,  have  been  very 
much  in  earnest  over  something.  You  can  see  in 
all  their  work  certain  dominating  ethical  ideas  which 
they  are  bent  on  imparting  or  enforcing.  Even  a 
Philistine  with  a  message  is  likely  to  make  the  world 
listen  to  him.  But  Wilson,  so  far  as  I  can  discover, 
had  no  message.  For  some  thirty  years  he  read 
lectures  on  ethics  —  I  judge  pretty  much  the  same 
lectures  —  to  classes  in  Edinburgh  University ;  for 
the  rest,  he  wrote  for  Blackwood's  Magazine.  He 
had  to  keep  the  printer's  devil  in  copy,  and  he  took 
care  that  what  he  furnished  should  not  be  dull ;  but 
it  is  vivacity  rather  than  earnestness  that  his  writing 
shows.  As  leading  editor  of  a  pronounced  Tory 
magazine,  he  was  bound  to  observe  a  journalist's 
consistency;  but  while  we  need  not  question  the 
sincerity  of  his  views,  the  eagerness  of  his  political 
writing  seems  to  proceed  rather  from  partisan  feeling 
than  from  any  profound  conviction.  He  loved  the 
stir  and  warmth  of  controversy,  and  with  his  cock- 
sure opinions  and  his  command  of  imaginative  epi- 
thet, controversy  was  certain  to  be  both  spirited  and 
picturesque ;  but  he  cannot  be  called  the  consistent 
and  resolute  advocate  of  any  cause.  In  his  mis- 
cellaneous, discursive  papers,  like  the  Nodes,  he 
touches  a  wide  variety  of  topics  without  special 
personal  interest  in  any,  or  seeming  to  feel  a  call  to 
convince  or  persuade  us  of  anything.  There  is 

184 


JOHN   WILSON 

no  real  urgency  in  the  man.  Even  in  his  critical 
verdicts  it  is  difficult  to  trace  any  consistent  prin- 
ciples. As  a  result,  his  taste  was  never  sure.  In  his 
own  writing  he  never  quite  perceived  the  difference 
between  the  humorous  and  the  hilarious,  between 
comedy  and  buffoonery,  between  pathos  and  bathos. 
He  records  his  impressions  of  men  and  books  in 
lively,  often  in  very  emphatic,  language;  but  they 
are  capricious  and  sometimes  conflicting.  When 
in  his  moods  he  is  liable  to  damn  his  most  favorite 
idol.  If  there  were  two  authors  whom  he  intelli- 
gently and  consistently  admired,  they  were  William 
Wordsworth  and  Walter  Scott.  Yet  one  day,  writ- 
ing for  the  Noctes,  in  a  freakish  mood,1  not  content 
with  calling  a  certain  Mr.  Martin  "a  jackass,"  — 
which  perhaps  he  was,  —  he  went  on  to  relieve  his 
gall  yet  further  by  remarking  that  Wordsworth  often 
wrote  like  an  idiot,  and  never  more  so  than  in  his 
great  sonnet  on  Milton;  that  he  was  becoming  less 
known  every  day;  that  he  ludicrously  overrated 
himself;  that  he  had  thrown  no  light  on  man's 
estate;  that  Crabbe  stood  immeasurably  above  him 
as  a  poet  of  the  poor ;  and  that  the  Excursion  was  the 
very  worst  poem  of  any  sort  in  the  English  language. 
And  then,  as  if  that  were  not  enough  for  one  fit,  a 
little  later  in  the  same  paper  —  and  remember  this 
was  in  1825,  when  the  great  Sir  Walter  was  the  god 
1  Noctes,  No.  22,  September,  1825. 

185 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

of  the  literary  world's  idolatry  —  he  declares  that 
Scott's  poetry  is  often  very  bad,  and  that,  except  when 
his  martial  spirit  is  up,  Scott  is  "only  a  tame  and 
feeble  writer."  But  the  week  after,  when  his  paper 
got  into  print,  he  was  in  a  blue,  shivering  terror  over 
what  he  had  done,  and  averred  in  a  letter  to  Black- 
wood  l  that  he  would  rather  die  that  night  than  own 
those  passages  to  be  his.  In  truth,  while  Wilson  had 
physical  courage  in  abundance,  of  moral  courage  he 
seems  to  have  had  very  little,  and  when  a  bit  fright- 
ened he  could  roar  you  as  gently  as  any  sucking  dove. 

Ill 

Wilson  dabbled  in  so  many  varieties  of  composi- 
tion that  it  is  a  little  difficult  to  classify  his  work. 
The  collected  edition  of  his  writings  includes,  besides « 
the  Noctes,  a  volume  of  verse,  a  volume  of  Tales 
and  Sketches,  two  volumes  of  papers  called  Recrea- 
tions, but  best  described  as  Out-of-Door  Sketches, 
and  four  volumes  of  critical  and  miscellaneous 
writing  in  great  part  culled  from  his  contributions  to 
Blackwood's.  The  verse  need  not  long  detain  us. 
His  longest  poem,  The  Isle  of  Palms,  which  was 
planned  and  in  part  written  as  early  as  1805,  is  in- 
teresting as  being,  at  least  in  conception,  an  early 
specimen  of  the  romantic  school  of  poetry.  It  was 

1  See   the  correspondence  in  Mrs.  Oliphant's  William  Black- 
wood  and  his  Sons,  Vol.  I,  Chap.  6. 

186 


JOHN   WILSON 

probably  suggested  by  some  of  Southey's  big  ro- 
mances ;  the  metre,  at  all  events,  is  clearly  reminis- 
cent of  Southey.  It  is  an  odd  mixture  of  wildly 
improbable  incident  and  very  sweet  sentiment.  On 
the  deck  of  a  great  ship,  bound  we  know  not  whither, 
are  a  lover  and  a  lady ;  when  suddenly  the  ship  is  a 
wreck,  and  all  on  board  are  lost  save  those  two.  A 
kindly  fortune  washes  them  together  on  some  shore 
where  it  seems  inconvenient  to  stay,  and  then  provides 
a  boat  to  waft  them  to  the  Isle  of  Palms.  In  this 
tropic  paradise  they  live  for  years,  wedded  by  fate, 
the  only  inhabitants  of  the  isle.  A  child  is  born  to 
them,  and  grows  to  young  maidenhood,  a  sylvan 
sprite,  with  no  knowledge  of  the  wide  world's  wicked- 
ness. But  at  last  a  passing  ship  takes  them  off,  and 
brings  them  safely  back  to  Liverpool  and  prose,  when 
the  husband  and  family,  we  are  left  to  infer,  settle 
down  comfortably  with  his  mother-in-law  in  Wales. 
To  tell  us  this  precious  tale  takes  some  four  thousand 
lines ;  but  it  is  hardly  exaggeration  to  say  that  Wilson 
never  wrote  a  line  of  genuine  poetry.  He  lacked  the 
gift  of  compression  and  the  gift  of  melody,  and  uni- 
formly diluted  his  passion  into  a  gush  of  lukewarm 
sentiment. 

Nor  are  the  Tales  much  better.  They  are  stories 
of  humble  life,  and  most  of  them  are  meant  to  be 
very  pathetic.  Their  subjects  are  not  cheerful,  as 
may  be  inferred  from  some  of  the  titles  —  The 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Lover's  Last  Visit,  The  Headstone,  The  Elder's 
Death  Bed,  Consumption,  and  others  of  the  same 
complexion.  Running  through  them  again  recently, 
I  computed  that  they  average  almost  exactly  two  and 
one-half  deaths  to  each  tale  —  which  is  depressing. 
Besides  this  high  mortality  there  is  a  large  assort- 
ment of  childless  widows,  broken  hearts,  forsaken 
maidens,  family  Bibles,  churchyards,  and  deserted 
cottages.  When  Wilson  makes  an  attempt  upon  our 
sensibilities  he  is  not  to  be  satisfied  with  any  halfway 
effects.  The  obverse  of  any  healthy  pathos  is  usu- 
ally humor ;  but  Wilson  seems  afraid  of  mixing  them, 
and  there  is  hardly  a  gleam  of  humor  in  these  Tales. 
It  is  to  be  feared,  however,  that  to  see  this  boisterous 
sentimentalist  grow  willowy  and  lachrymose  some- 
times does  provoke  from  the  irreverent  reader  a 
smile.  His  style,  too,  is  not  realistic  or  natural,  but 
rhetorical  and  melodramatic.  Fancy  a  peasant 
girl  as  she  meets  a  friend  she  has  not  seen  for  some 
time  breaking  out  after  this  fashion :  — 

"  For  mercy's  sake !  Sit  down,  Sarah,  and  tell  me 
what  evil  has  befallen  you !  For  you  are  white  as  a 
ghost.  Fear  not  to  confide  anything  to  my  bosom ; 
we  herded  sheep  together  on  the  lonesome  braes  — 
we  have  stripped  the  bark  together  in  the  more 
lonesome  woods;  we  have  played,  laughed,  sung, 
danced  together;  we  have  talked  merrily  and 

188 


JOHN    WILSON 

gayly,  but  innocently  enough  surely,  of  sweethearts 
together ;  and,  Sarah,  graver  thoughts,  too,  have  we 
shared,  for  when  your  poor  brother  died  away  like  a 
frosted  flower,  I  wept  as  if  I  had  been  his  sister;  nor 
can  I  ever  be  so  happy  in  this  world  as  to  forget  him. 
Tell  me,  my  friend,  why  are  you  here,  and  why  is 
your  face  so  ghastly?" 

"A  plague  upon  sighing  and  grief,"  says  Falstaff, 
"it  blows  a  man  up  like  a  bladder!"  Wilson's 
sentimental  style  seems  to  have  suffered  in  that  way. 
It  is  not  full;  it  is  inflated,  dropsical.  There  is 
none  of  the  strength  of  reticence  in  it,  none  of  the 
simplicity  of  nature.  All  his  sentimental  writing, 
indeed,  is  lush ;  the  Scotch  have  a  word  that  often 
fits  it  still  better  —  it  is  "wersh." 

Among  the  miscellaneous  writings  are  several 
papers  of  a  purely  critical  character,  of  which  the 
most  important  are  those  on  Burns,  on  Coleridge,  on 
Wordsworth  (made  up  of  several  shorter  notices 
fused  into  one)  on  Macaulay's  Lays  of  Ancient 
Rome,  and  the  once  famous  —  or  notorious  — 
review  of  Tennyson's  first  volume.  None  of  these 
can  be  given  a  very  high  place  in  the  body  of  English 
critical  literature.  Wilson's  opinions,  as  we  have 
seen,  depended  greatly  on  his  moods,  and  we  never 
can  be  quite  sure  that  the  verdict  of  to-day  is  not  to 
189 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

be  contradicted  by  the  verdict  of  to-morrow.  His 
criticism  is  based  on  no  defined  principles,  and  of 
necessity,  therefore,  is  often  arbitrary  and  capricious. 
Indeed,  he  seldom  makes  any  attempt  at  systematic 
and  reasoned  estimate  of  the  work  under  examina- 
tion ;  he  simply  sets  down  —  usually  in  very  pro- 
nounced fashion  —  his  own  impulsive  feeling  about 
his  author.  His  criticism  is  the  record  of  John  Wil- 
son's likes  and  dislikes.  Hence  it  is  likely  to  be  very 
exaggerated  and  very  diffuse.  In  the  1834  paper  on 
Coleridge  —  which  may  have  been  designed  as  a 
kind  of  apology  for  the  scurrilous  article  that  opened 
the  first  number  of  Blackwood's  —  he  occupies  near  a 
score  of  pages  with  quotations  and  mere  rhapsodical 
eulogy  thereon.  Two-thirds  of  the  paper  on  Ma- 
caulay's  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,  one  of  the  best 
of  his  reviews,  is  taken  up  with  rambling  talk  about 
the  younger  contemporary  poets.  Everywhere  he 
gossips  and  comments,  rather  than  interprets.  But, 
at  all  events,  his  criticism,  though  sometimes  wrong- 
headed,  is  sincere  and  hearty.  It  is  never  the  dry, 
technical  jargon  of  the  professional  critic.  Wilson's 
appreciation  was  certainly  limited.  He  liked  senti- 
ment and  action  in  their  pronounced  forms ;  he  dis- 
liked weakness,  prettiness,  over-refinement.  It  was 
inevitable  that  this  big-chested  critic  with  a  voice 
like  a  megaphone,  who  admired  Macaulay's  drum- 
and-trumpet  Lays,  should  think  little  of  John 

190 


JOHN   WILSON 

Keats,  and  should  deride  the  owls  and  mermen,  and 
"airy,  fairy  Lillians"  of  young  Mr.  Alfred  Tenny- 
son. Yet  within  his  limits,  if  we  will  make  allow- 
ance for  occasional  personal  prejudice,  Wilson's 
appreciations  and  aversions  are  quite  intelligible, 
and  command  our  interest  if  not  always  our  agree- 
ment. When  he  heartily  enjoys  a  book,  his  com- 
ments are  sure  to  be  stimulating,  and  are  sometimes 
really  incisive.  And  even  when  he  has  a  mind  to 
scourge,  so  long  as  he  is  only  recounting  his  own 
genuine  feeling,  and  not  feeding  some  personal  or 
political  spite,  he  seldom  goes  far  wrong.  Tenny- 
son not  unnaturally  took  umbrage  at  the  roughness 
with  which  Blackwood  handled  his  maiden  volume; 
but  it  may  be  noticed  that  the  ripening  taste  of  the 
poet  removed  from  the  second  edition  of  the  volume 
most  of  the  poems  on  which  "crusty  Christopher" 
had  laid  his  big  finger.  In  a  word,  Wilson  is  a  pleas- 
ant commentator,  but  not  a  great  critic.  His  spon- 
taneous judgments  are  usually  well  enough ;  he  is  not 
always  wise  when  he  attempts  to  justify  them.  In- 
deed, much  of  his  best  literary  criticism  is  to  be  found 
in  the  brief,  incidental  comment  and  opinion  scattered 
through  his  miscellaneous  writings.  There  are  many 
of  these  excellent  obiter  dicta  in  the  Noctes. 

Far  better  than  the  tales  or  the  criticism  are  the 
out-of-door  papers.     In  them  Wilson  is  nearly  at  his 
very  best.     To  be  sure,  here  as  everywhere,  Chris- 
191 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

topher  seems  in  a  state  of  over-exhilaration.  His 
fancy  is  too  flamboyant,  and  his  manner  vagarious 
to  the  last  degree.  In  the  course  of  half  an  hour's 
walk  his  remarks  will  range  from  the  nature  of  Deity 
to  the  best  breed  of  game-cocks,  and  leave  you  hardly 
a  moment  to  look  about  you.  In  the  midst  of  a 
hunting  excursion  in  the  wild  Highland  Glen  Etive 
he  cannot  repress  a  full  quarter-hour  sermon  — 
apparently  to  his  dogs.  Yet  in  these  papers  there  is 
nothing  factitious;  the  enthusiasm  is  not  forced. 
They  are  full  of  space  and  breeziness.  Christopher 
is  in  the  open,  where  he  was  born  to  be,  and  the  fresh 
air  goes  to  his  head.  Mr.  Saintsbury  pronounces 
Wilson's  descriptions  of  scenery  better  than  anything 
of  the  kind  in  English  prose;  but  I  think  he  must 
have  forgotten  a  good  deal  to  say  that.  I  should 
rather  say  that  Wilson  had  not  in  any  high  degree  the 
gift  of  description  proper.  There  are,  to  be  sure, 
many  vivid  and  beautiful  glimpses  in  his  pages ;  but, 
as  a  rule,  he  does  not  set  the  landscape  before  you. 
What  he  can  do  is  to  make  you  feel  his  own  joy  in 
it.  In  reality  he  is  not  describing  the  scene,  he  is 
relating  his  own  experience.  Any  one  who  had  never 
taken  the  walk  from  Ambleside  to  Grasmere  by  the 
west  bank  of  Rydal  would  hardly  be  able  to  form  any 
picture  of  it  from  Wilson's  paper,  A  Stroll  to  Gras- 
mere; but  to  one  who  knows  and  loves  that  loveliest 
of  English  walks,  the  paper  will  be  a  delight,  recall- 
192 


JOHN   WILSON 

ing  at  every  sentence  some  fair  glimpse  or  cherished 
memory.  Similar  comment  might  be  made  upon  the 
fancy-touched  picture  of  Edinburgh  in  The  Moors, 
or  the  various  scenes  in  the  Day  on  Windermere. 
And,  although  Wilson  was  an  out-of-door  man,  he 
never  had  the  keen  eye  of  the  naturalist,  or  the  love 
for  particular  forms  and  phases  of  nature.  He  was 
no  Thoreau,  who  could  "name  all  the  birds  without 
a  gun,"  and  was  in  league  with  the  trees  of  the  field. 
Wilson  always  loved  nature  in  her  larger  masses  and 
more  striking  aspects.  Moreover,  he  never  cared 
much  for  still  life.  His  scene  is  usually  the  setting 
for  some  form  of  strenuous  activity.  He  must  have 
walking,  and  riding,  and  rowing,  and  swimming, 
and  hunting,  and  fighting,  —  all  the  joys  of  healthy 
animal  life.  His  love  for  horses  and  dogs  makes 
many  pages  of  very  good  reading.  I  don't  know 
whether  this  generation  reads  any  longer  Christo- 
pher's account  of  his  ride  on  Colonsay;  but  if  it 
doesn't,  more's  the  pity.  Old  Colonsay  is  one  of 
the  best  horses  that  have  ever  got  into  books.  While 
as  to  the  dog  Flo,  his  glorious  encounter  with  the 
drunken  carter's  mastiff,  and  the  general  engagement 
that  followed  between  the  schoolmaster  with  his  boys 
and  the  village  tradesmen  on  the  one  side,  and  the 
infuriated  carters  with  a  gang  of  gypsies  and  a  band 
of  brawny  Irishmen  on  the  other  —  that  is  a  classic, 

one  of  the  best  fights  in  literature.     In  all  these 
o  193 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

outdoor  papers  Wilson's  animation  is  contagious. 
You  shall  not  read  a  dozen  pages  without  an  access 
of  health,  a  tightening  of  muscle,  a  new  realization 

"  How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living !   How  fit  to  employ 
All  the  heart,  and  the  soul,  and  the  senses  forever  in  joy !  " 

But  it  is  in  the  Nodes  that  we  must  look  for  the 
fullest  display  of  Wilson's  powers.  Here  his  imagi- 
nation, his  wisdom,  his  satire,  his  pathos,  his  exuber- 
ant humor,  are  all  seen  at  their  best.  Nothing  else 
so  well  shows  his  almost  marvellous  affluence  and 
volubility.  It  can  hardly  be  necessary  to  explain 
that  the  Nodes  are  a  series  of  papers  in  dialogue, 
recounting  the  converse  of  a  jovial  company  of 
Blackwood's  men  who  are  supposed  to  meet  for  an 
occasional  night  of  good  fellowship  around  the  table 
of  a  famous  Edinburgh  tavern,  Ambrose's  —  whence 
the  name,  Nodes  Ambrosiana.  It  is  not  certain 
with  whom  the  plan  of  the  series  originated.  His 
friends  were  inclined  to  claim  that  credit  for  William 
Maginn,  the  boisterous  Irishman  who  figures,  as 
Ensign  O'Doherty,  rather  more  prominently  than 
any  one  else  in  the  first  eight  or  ten  numbers.  Pro- 
fessor Ferrier,  Wilson's  editor,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
confident  that  the  suggestion  came  from  Wilson, 
though  he  will  not  admit  the  first  eighteen  papers  to 
the  collected  edition  of  the  Works.  Whoever  planned 
the  Noctes,  the  first  half-dozen  numbers  give  scanty 
194 


JOHN   WILSON 

evidence  of  Wilson's  genius.  After  that  there  are, 
I  think,  increasing  marks  of  his  hand,  and  when, 
about  1825,  he  took  the  series  entirely  under  his 
control,  the  papers  gain  immensely  both  in  manner 
and  content.  After  about  that  time  most  of  them 
were  written  entirely  by  him,  and  his  temper  domi- 
nates them  all.  He  also  changed  the  plan  of  the 
series  so  as  to  give  it  greater  unity,  and  some  individu- 
ality to  the  speakers.  The  early  papers  introduced 
a  considerable  number  of  persons,  of  various  sorts 
and  conditions,  and  the  speech  and  manner  of  each 
were  imitated  with  only  very  moderate  success. 
Wilson  wisely  abandoned  this  attempt  to  represent 
with  dramatic  fidelity  many  different  persons,  and 
reduced  the  speakers  to  three :  Christopher  North, 
who  stands  for  Wilson  himself;  Tickler,  who  is  said 
to  have  been  suggested  by  an  uncle  of  Wilson,  Robert 
Sym;  and  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  James  Hogg.  There 
is,  indeed,  no  very  distinct  individuality  in  these 
three;  they  are  only  three  persons  in  one  John 
Wilson.  But  they  enabled  Wilson  to  express  dif- 
ferent sides  of  his  character,  different  phases  of  his 
feeling.  Christopher  North,  who  speaks  chiefly  as  a 
kind  of  interlocutor  to  suggest  or  guide  the  talk,  is 
Wilson  in  his  staider  moods,  with  a  tendency  to 
philosophic  reflection  in  rhetorical  forms;  Tickler 
is  Wilson  in  his  occasional  moods  of  prosaic  common 
sense,  trying  to  be  a  man  of  affairs  with  a  vein  of 


A    GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

cynicism;  the  Shepherd  is  Wilson  the  poet  and 
humorist  letting  himself  go.  Naturally,  therefore, 
the  Shepherd  is  the  most  interesting  of  the  trio,  and 
comes  nearest  to  being  an  independent  character. 
He  was  doubtless  studied  directly,  though  very  freely, 
from  the  original.  Hogg  had  been  an  occasional 
contributor  to  Blackwood's  ever  since  the  famous 
"  Chaldee  Manuscript,"  —  of  which  he  claimed  to 
be  the  author,  —  and  by  1825  was  one  of  the  most 
picturesque  figures  in  Edinburgh  literary  society. 
The  real  Hogg,  however,  was  clearly  very  much  ideal- 
ized in  the  Shepherd  of  the  Noctes,  and  in  some  of 
his  letters  shows  an  odd  mixture  of  vanity  and  vexa- 
tion at  seeing  himself  translated  into  so  large  a  type. 
The  colloquy  as  a  literary  form  has  some  manifest 
advantages.  It  enables  you  to  prove  anything,  by 
making  one  of  the  disputants  a  man  of  straw.  It  is 
also  an  excellent  device  for  self-flattery.  You  have 
only  to  divide  yourself  into  two  persons  and  then  let 
each  flatter  the  other.  North  is  forever  admiring 
the  Shepherd's  rhapsodies  or  dissolving  in  tears  at 
his  pathos;  while  the  Shepherd  is  forever  holding 
up  his  hands  in  awe  at  North's  eloquence.  "O 
man,  man !  but  ye're  an  orator  —  the  orator  o'  the 
human  race!"  Certainly  a  manner  so  discursive 
and  rambling  as  Wilson's  found  in  the  Noctes  the 
best  possible  form  of  expression.  Impulsive,  senti- 
mental, he  had  little  power  of  connected  thinking, 

196 


JOHN   WILSON 

and  could  rarely  keep  himself  to  one  theme  for  ten 
minutes  together.  But  in  the  jovial  evenings  around 
the  board  at  Ambrose's,  connected  thinking  would 
be  only  another  name  for  dulness.  Politics,  criti- 
cism, philosophy,  sentiment,  fancy,  are  mixed  in  this 
rushing  flow  of  talk  and  enlivened  by  jest,  and  story, 
and  song.  Within  a  half-dozen  pages  you  may  come 
upon  a  r£sum£  of  German  contemporary  philosophy, 
an  account  of  a  dog  fight,  an  estimate  of  Wordsworth's 
poetry,  a  scathing  denunciation  of  the  Cockney  school 
of  poetry,  a  bravura  of  sentimental  rhetoric  over  a 
Scotch  moonrise,  and  a  comic  song;  and  the  whole 
fairly  boiling  and  bubbling  with  good  spirits.  Possi- 
bly the  modern  reader  may  suggest  that  something 
of  the  exhilaration  of  the  Noctes  is  due  to  spirits  of 
another  brew.  Wilson,  like  old  Ben  Jonson,  was 
no  man  to  sing 

"  My  mind  to  me  a  kingdom  is, 
While  the  lank  hungry  belly  cries  for  food," 

and  the  amount  swallowed,  both  of  solids  and 
liquids,  at  each  of  the  Noctes  is  certainly  something 
enormous.  I  believe  Mr.  Saintsbury  (who  rather 
prides  himself  as  an  authority  upon  such  matters) 
pronounces  the  Gargantuan  exploits  at  Ambrose's 
table  quite  within  the  limits  of  possibility,  only  sug- 
gesting that  there  were  too  many  oysters  for  the 
Glenlivet.  On  these  questions  I  pretend  to  no 
197 


A   GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

opinion;  but  I  well  remember  the  shock  of  mild 
surprise  my  callow  youth  received  on  first  reading  the 
Nodes,  on  the  recommendation  of  a  worthy  doctor 
of  divinity  much  enamoured  of  them.  And  I  still 
incline  to  doubt  whether  the  less  valorous  appetites 
of  to-day  will  quite  assent  to  the  confident  assertion 
of  the  Shepherd:  " There  does  not  at  this  blessed 
moment  breathe  on  the  earth's  surf  ace  ae  human  body 
that  doesna  prefer  eating  and  drinking  to  all  ither 
pleasures  o'  body  or  soul.  .  .  .  Eat  an  drink  wi' 
all  your  powers  —  moral,  intellectual,  and  spiritual. 
This  is  the  rule."  The  Shepherd  follows  his  rule 
very  closely.  On  a  fair  computation,  about  a  quarter 
of  all  the  talk  in  the  Nodes  is  devoted  to  meats  and 
drinks  and  the  effects  thereof. 

Of  course  all  this  is  a  Barmecide  feast  —  only  a 
device  to  afford  expression  for  Wilson's  extravagant 
high  spirits.  Ambrose's  was,  in  fact,  not  at  all  the 
abode  of  oriental  splendor  it  appears  in  Wilson's 
pages,  but  only  a  plain  Edinburgh  tavern;  and  if 
Wilson  and  Sym  and  Hogg  ever  did  foregather 
there,  their  potations  were  doubtless  very  moderate. 
Their  talk  in  the  Nodes  is  by  no  means  the  talk  of  half- 
befuddled  men,  whose  god  is  their  belly  and  who  mind 
earthly  things.  It  is  mostly  very  good  talk  indeed, 
playing  over  all  sorts  of  subjects  with  quick  intelli- 
gence, and  glowing  with  fun  and  fancy.  There  are 

198 


JOHN   WILSON 

bits  of  excellent  criticism  in  it,  not  quite  dissolved 
in  a  wide  welter  of  words.  In  fact,  as  already  re- 
marked, Wilson's  literary  criticism  is  often  at  its 
best  in  these  incidental  comments  struck  out  in  the 
heat  of  conversation.  There  is  hardly  a  paper  in 
which  the  Shepherd  does  not  inquire  after  "onything 
gude  in  literature."  The  verdicts  are  usually  very 
positive ;  books,  new  or  old,  are  praised  and  damned 
without  any  nice  qualifications  of  sentence.  More- 
over, the  plan  of  the  Noctes  serves  to  disguise  Wil- 
son's frequent  inconsistencies;  for  on  such  jovial 
occasions  the  opinions  of  the  critics  will  naturally 
vary  with  their  moods,  and  Wilson  as  Christopher 
must  inevitably  often  disagree  with  Wilson  as  the 
Shepherd.  But,  taken  together,  the  papers  afford 
an  interesting  conspectus  of  literary  news  and  criti- 
cism for  some  ten  years.  And  there  is  a  deal  of  sound 
sense  —  of  a  rather  high  Tory  sort  —  on  a  great 
variety  of  other  matters,  on  current  politics  and  states- 
men, on  social  questions,  on  education,  on  religion, 
on  public  morals  —  on  all  topics  in  which  a  well-fed 
Scot  might  be  expected  to  take  interest.  But,  of 
course,  the  suppers  at  Ambrose's  were  not  intended 
primarily  as  Aids  to  Reflection.  The  great  charm  of 
the  Noctes  is  the  buoyant,  ebullient  life  that  pulses 
all  through  them.  These  men  have  the  gift,  not 
very  common  in  colloquial  writing,  of  "making  you 
of  their  company  anon,"  as  Chaucer  says.  And  if 

199 


A    GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

they  are  a  little  boisterous  in  tone,  and  their  humor, 
now  and  then  —  as  the  Shepherd  owns  —  "a  bit 
coorse,"  yet  it  is  the  clean  mirth  of  robust  and 
healthy  men.  In  these  days  when  so  much  hectic, 
morbid,  neurotic  literature  is  offered  for  our  recrea- 
tion, it  is  pleasant  to  join  sometimes  the  company  of 
these  red-blooded  persons  who  don't  enjoy  poor 
health. 

The  Shepherd,  in  particular,  is  delightful.  In  his 
talk  you  get  Wilson's  humor,  sentiment,  and  imagi- 
nation in  their  superlative  forms.  The  humor 
cannot  be  called  quiet  or  delicate ;  yet  the  Shepherd 
has  store  of  neat  quips  and  jests,  and  now  and  then 
strikes  out  a  vivid  portrait  in  few  words  —  as  of 
Lockhart,  "  a  pale  face  an'  a  black  touzy  head,  but 
an  ee  like  an  eagle's,  an'  a  sort  o'  lauch  about  the 
screwed-up  mouth  o'  him  that  fules  ca'd  no  canny, 
for  they  could  na  thole  the  meanin'  o'  't."  Some  of 
his  satiric  hits  are  very  good,  as  when  he  hopes  there's 
many  an  incident  in  the  Excursion  he  has  forgotten, 
"for  I  canna  say  I  reclet  ony  incident  at  all  in  the 
haill  poem,  but  the  Pedlar's  refusin'  to  tak  a  tumbler 
o'  gin  an'  water  wi'  the  solitary.  That  did  mak  a 
deep  impression  on  my  memory,  for  I  thocht  it  a  most 
rude  an'  heartless  thing  to  decline  drinkin'  wi'  a 
gentleman  in  his  ain  house;  but  I  hope  it  wasna 
true,  an'  that  the  whole  is  a  meleegnant  invention  o' 

200 


JOHN   WILSON 

Mr.  Wordsworth."  The  Shepherd's  anger,  too, 
sometimes  inspires  passages  of  hearty  Scottish  male- 
diction that  are  animating  reading.  But  best  of  all 
are  his  passages  of  flamboyant,  full-length  descrip- 
tion or  narrative.  The  Shepherd's  imagination, 
like  his  humor,  is  very  profuse;  it  revels  in  details 
and  lavishes  adjectives.  Yet  the  resulting  picture  is 
always  real  and  glowing.  His  account  of  the  Ex- 
plosion of  a  Haggis,  of  his  Robbing  of  an  Eagle's 
Nest,  of  Christopher's  Fishing,  of  the  Glasgow 
Dog  Fight,  his  contrasted  description  of  the  squalor 
of  Morning  in  Old  Edinburgh,  and  Daybreak 
in  the  Ettrick  Valley,  his  delightful  defence  of 
Sleeping  in  Church,  —  these,  with  half  a  hundred 
other  passages,  will  occur  to  all  lovers  of  the  Nodes 
as  striking  examples  of  the  union  of  effusive  senti- 
ment or  humor  with  vivid  and  realistic  detail.  They 
are  better  than  the  similar  rhetorical  fantasies  and 
elaborate  pathetic  passages  in  Wilson's  other  works, 
because  they  seem  more  spontaneous.  And,  al- 
though his  characteristic  manner  fairly  runs  riot  in 
them,  the  Scottish  dialect  gives  them  a  homely  natu- 
ralness and  keeps  their  sentiment  from  getting 
mawkish. 

On  the  whole,  we  may  admit  that  Wilson  could  not 
add  much  to  the  world's  knowledge,  and  that  he  did 
little  to  champion  any  reform  or  advance.  His 
prejudices  were  obstinate,  his  judgments  often  ca- 

201 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

pricious  or  perverse.  He  lacked  fixed  and  reasoned 
convictions;  he  lacked  steadfast  earnestness  of  re- 
solve. We  distrust  the  sanity  of  his  opinions  and  the 
consistency  of  his  conduct.  Moreover,  his  mind 
would  not  work  steadily  at  low  pressure.  As  a  re- 
sult, his  writing  has  no  repose,  no  quiet  certainty  of 
manner;  he  is  liable  to  fatigue  us,  after  a  little,  by 
the  very  noise  of  his  enthusiasm.  Yet  it  is  assuredly 
one  of  the  offices  of  good  literature  to  cheer  and  in- 
vigorate, even  to  amuse,  as  well  as  to  inform  or  in- 
spire. And  few  writers  of  his  generation  contributed 
more  to  the  literature  of  cheer  than  Wilson.  It  was 
no  slight  service  to  keep  before  the  public  for  a  score 
of  years  a  personality  so  healthy,  a  temperament  so 
optimistic  and  joyous.  His  humor,  to  be  sure,  is  not 
of  the  gentle  variety  that  enlivens  five  o'clock  tea, 
but  it  is  never  merely  bacchanalian  —  which  makes 
the  dreariest  of  all  writing.  Even  in  the  most  ex- 
hilarated passages  of  what  Carlyle  unjustly  calls 
"his  drunken  Nodes"  there  is  far  more  of  cheer 
than  of  inebriation.  If  Wilson,  on  the  Moors  or  at 
the  table  of  Ambrose,  does  not  forget  that  man  is  an 
animal,  he  always  remembers  that  he  is  a  rational  and 
spiritual  animal.  He  has  a  healthy  appreciation  not 
only  of  the  joys  of  sense,  but  of  all  the  beauty  of  the 
world,  and  of  all  the  manifold  humors  of  man  and 
womankind.  It  is  impossible  to  rise  from  an  hour 
with  him  without  feeling  that  life  is  worth  living,  that 

202 


JOHN   WILSON 

"A  merry  heart  goes  all  the  day, 
Your  sad  tires  in  a  mile-a." 

In  the  merciless  winnowing  of  time  all  of  his  verse, 
all  the  Tales,  and  most  of  the  criticism  will  doubtless 
fall  into  oblivion  —  nay,  have  already  descended 
thither.  But  the  wholesome  Out-of-Door  Papers 
and  the  Nodes  ought  to  live  at  least  another  century 
as  part  of  the  literature  of  invigoration.  In  them 
Christopher  and  the  Shepherd  are  too  much  alive 
soon  to  die  out  of  the  memory  of  men  who  love  good 
fellowship  and  hearty  cheer. 


203 


LEIGH  HUNT 


LEIGH  HUNT  was  certainly  not  a  great  writer  nor  a 
great  man.  One  short  poem,  familiar  to  everybody, 
—  the  Abou  ben  Adhem, —  and  two  or  three  other 
short  poems  that  deserve  to  be  familiar  are  all  the 
verse  he  ever  wrote  of  any  real  merit;  while  as  to 
the  prose,  though  much  of  it  is  entertaining  and  some 
of  it  of  real  value  as  criticism,  there  is  no  passage 
in  the  whole  body  of  it  that,  either  for  weight  of 
thought  or  finish  of  style,  can  be  called  classic. 
Much  of  his  writing,  perhaps  most  of  it,  belongs 
rather  to  journalism  than  to  literature,  entertaining 
to-day,  forgotten  to-morrow.  No  uniform  edition 
of  his  works  has  ever  been  issued ;  many  of  the  books 
have  already  fallen  so  far  into  obscurity  that  it  is 
difficult  to  get  a  complete  set  of  them  together.  If 
his  reputation  is  to  be  measured  by  the  permanent 
value  of  the  writing  he  has  left  us,  he  can  hardly  be 
sure  of  a  place  in  our  literary  history.  That,  doubt- 
less, is  the  only  ultimate  measure  of  fame  for  any 
author;  but  meantime  Leigh  Hunt  deserves  to  be 

204 


LEIGH   HUNT 

remembered  another  century,  not  only  as  a  pleasing 
writer,  but  as  a  man  of  original  though  limited  genius, 
and  of  a  personality  that,  in  spite  of  its  blemishes, 
certainly  had  a  peculiar  attraction  for  many  greater 
men  than  himself.  With  a  most  hearty  love  for 
books  and  all  bookish  things,  he  always  sought  the 
companionship  of  men  of  letters,  and  his  genuine 
kindliness,  his  sprightly  converse,  his  taste,  keen  and 
delicate,  if  not  broad  or  sound,  always  made  him 
welcome.  The  cheery,  chirruping,  effervescent  little 
optimist  was  the  friend  of  two  generations  of  literary 
men,  and  seems  omnipresent  in  literary  society  for 
fifty  years.  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  Byron,  Shelley, 
Keats,  Moore,  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  Crabb  Robinson, 
Haydon,  Talfourd,  Charles  and  Mary  Cowden 
Clarke,  Wilson,  Lockhart,  Murray,  Macaulay, 
Forster,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Browning,  Mrs. 
Browning,  Lord  Houghton,  the  Carlyles,  Rossetti, 
William  Bell  Scott,  Lowell,  Hawthorne,  Motley,  — 
Leigh  Hunt  knew  every  one  of  them,  and  turns  up 
somewhere  in  the  memoirs  or  correspondence  of 
every  one.  His  own  letters  are  perhaps  quite  as 
interesting  as  his  other  prose  writing,  yet  it  is  evident 
that  they  miss  the  vivacity  of  his  presence  and  con- 
verse. A  reputation  like  this,  based  not  so  much 
upon  the  value  of  a  writer's  work  as  upon  the  breadth 
of  his  acquaintance  and  the  elusive  charm  of  his 
personality,  is  likely  to  leave  the  literary  critic  some- 
205 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

what  at  a  loss,  or  to  beguile  him  into  gossip  and 
reminiscence. 

The  account  of  his  parentage  which  Hunt  gives 
in  his  Autobiography  makes  it  evident  that  he  came 
honestly  by  his  characteristic  traits  both  of  temper 
and  of  belief.  His  father,  Isaac  Hunt,  was  a  West 
Indian  sent  from  the  Barbados  in  his  boyhood  to 
be  educated  in  Philadelphia.  He  took  the  degree  of 
Master  of  Arts  both  in  Philadelphia  and  in  New 
York,  —  so  his  son  says,  —  and  then  decided  not  to 
return  to  the  Barbados,  but  to  remain  in  America 
and  enter  the  profession  of  law.  His  commencement 
oration  in  Philadelphia  must  have  been  of  an  elo- 
quence rather  unusual  in  that  variety  of  address; 
for  two  young  ladies  fell  in  love  with  him  on  hearing 
it  —  which  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  his 
decision  to  remain  in  America.  At  all  events,  he 
married  the  younger  of  the  two.  The  other  one, 
by  the  way,  married  the  artist,  Benjamin  West,  and 
showed  very  substantial  friendship  for  the  Hunts 
in  their  later  seasons  of  adversity.  When  the  Revo- 
lutionary War  broke  out,  Isaac  Hunt's  loud-spoken 
British  loyalty  exposed  him  to  rough  handling  in 
Philadelphia,  and  he  escaped  to  London,  leaving 
his  wife  and  child  to  follow  some  months  later. 
Once  there,  he  speedily  exchanged  law  for  divinity, 
and  on  her  arrival  in  London  Mrs.  Hunt  found  her 
husband  an  eloquent  preacher,  with  crowds  of 

206 


LEIGH   HUNT 

carriages  at  his  church  door  and  throngs  of  delighted 
ladies  hanging  on  his  utterances.  But  it  was  soon 
noticed  that  the  eloquent  preacher  drank  too  much 
claret,  and  owed  too  much  money.  In  truth,  he  had 
no  depth  or  steadiness  of  character.  He  could  never 
understand  the  nature  of  a  financial  obligation,  — 
a  weakness  that  he  bequeathed  unimpaired  to  his 
son,  —  and  after  the  first  flush  of  prosperity,  was 
always  running  behind  the  constable.  Leigh  Hunt 
says  the  first  room  he  himself  remembers  being 
inside  of  was  a  debtor's  jail.  But  nothing  could 
depress  Isaac  Hunt's  easy  good  nature;  he  was  al- 
ways vivacious  and  hopeful,  even  unconcerned.  As 
to  his  religious  beliefs,  if  he  had  any,  they  must  have 
been  of  a  very  gelatinous  sort ;  he  seems  to  have  slid 
easily  down  the  scale  of  heterodoxy  from  one  ism  to 
another,  till  he  landed  in  a  sort  of  benevolent  indiffer- 
entism.  His  son,  who  always  showed  an  amiable 
charity  for  his  father's  failings,  says  with  delightful 
naivet^,  "While  he  was  not  a  hypocrite,  my  father 
was  not,  I  must  confess,  remarkable  for  being  ex- 
plicit about  himself." 

But  Hunt's  picture  of  his  mother,  in  the  early 
chapters  of  the  Autobiography,  is  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  tributes  of  filial  affection  in  our  literature; 
it  is  impossible  not  to  have  a  kindly  feeling  for  the 
man  who  could  write  it.  She  was  a  gentle,  sad- 
faced  woman,  with  a  liking  for  a  little  music  and  all 

207 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

the  gracious  domesticities  of  life,  and  with  a  tempera- 
ment as  pensive  as  her  husband's  was  mercurial. 
She  could  not  sympathize  with  his  cheerful  incapacity ; 
and  the  long  struggle  with  poverty  early  wore  out  her 
strength  and  her  spirits.  Hunt  could  not  remember 
to  have  seen  her  smile,  "save  in  sorrowful  tender- 
ness."  But  she  was  full  of  pity  for  the  hardships  of 
others;  it  was  the  taking  off  her  flannel  petticoat  to 
clothe  a  freezing  woman  she  met  on  the  street  that 
fixed  upon  her  a  rheumatic  affection  for  life.  As  her 
son  truly  says,  "Saints  have  been  made  for  charities 
no  greater."  She  imparted  to  her  children  —  at  all 
events  to  Leigh  —  something  of  her  own  extreme 
sympathy  for  all  pain,  and  her  own  dislike  of  any- 
thing violent  or  overstrenuous,  even  in  language. 
Hunt  says  that  when  his  childish  anger  once  found 
relief  in  a  word  that  probably  did  not  give  the  record- 
ing angel  much  concern,  he  himself  was  tormented 
by  conscience  for  a  week,  and  couldn't  receive  a  bit 
of  praise  or  a  pat  of  encouragement  without  thinking 
to  himself,  "Ah,  they  little  suspect  I  am  the  boy  who 
said,  ' Damn  it!"' 

The  young  Leigh  Hunt  got  his  temperament 
mostly  from  his  father,  and  his  training  from  his 
mother.  The  results  were  not  altogether  fortunate. 
At  the  age  of  eight  he  was  entered  at  Christ's  Hospital 
School  —  just  after  Coleridge  and  Lamb  had  left  it. 
Old  Dr.  Bowyer  —  whom  Coleridge  declared  to  be 

208 


LEIGH   HUNT 

ready  to  flog  anybody  except  a  cherub,  all  head  and 
wings,  whom  he  couldn't  flog  —  was  still  master 
there,  and  it  might  have  been  supposed  that  his 
vigorous  discipline,  with  the  rough  experiences  of  an 
English  boys'  school,  would  have  knocked  a  little 
robustness  into  Hunt;  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  de- 
veloped a  sort  of  priggish  gentleness  not  altogether 
becoming  a  genuine  boy.  A  square,  good-natured 
fight  now  and  then  would  probably  have  been  good 
for  him;  but  he  refused  to  strike.  He  plumed  him- 
self on  saying  what  he  chose  in  any  quarrel,  and  then 
quietly  taking  the  consequences.  That  was  what 
he  called  a  moral  victory.  He  said  with  evident 
satisfaction,  fifty  years  afterward,  "I  gained  the 
reputation  of  a  romantic  enthusiast  whose  daring  in 
behalf  of  a  friend  or  a  good  cause  nothing  could 
put  down."  It  is  clear  enough  that,  even  in  his 
school  days,  he  began  to  show  that  jaunty  humility 
and  pride  of  martyrdom  which  his  critics  later  found 
so  exasperating.  To  provoke  your  enemy  to  smite 
you  on  the  one  cheek  in  order  that  you  may  have  the 
proud  satisfaction  of  meekly  turning  to  him  the  other, 
is  not  exactly  the  conduct  enjoined  by  Scripture; 
but  Hunt  dearly  loved  to  do  it,  and  began  the  practice 
very  early. 

On  leaving  school  at  sixteen  Hunt  did  not  go  on 
to  the  University,  but  drifted  for  a  time.     The  only 
ambition  he  had  thus  far  developed  was  to  put  his 
p  209 


A   GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

name  in  the  roll  of  English  poets.  He  confesses 
that  he  had  not  yet  learned  the  multiplication 
table,  —  indeed,  I  don't  think  he  ever  did  quite 
master  that  mystery,  —  but  he  had  written  a  good 
many  verses;  about  a  year  and  a  half  after  leaving 
school  he  published  a  thin  volume  of  them.  His 
father  got  him  a  handsome  list  of  subscribers,  and 
the  verses  were  thought  by  some  less  partial  critics 
to  be  rather  clever.  The  generous  public,  I  believe, 
bought  rather  more  copies  of  them  than  of  a  volume 
of  Lyrical  Ballads  issued  about  a  year  before.  The 
success  of  his  venture  confirmed  his  poetical  inclina- 
tions, and  he  contributed  occasional  verse  to  various 
periodicals  during  the  next  half-dozen  years.  But 
his  literary  aspirations  was  soon  turned  in  another 
and  more  fortunate  direction.  His  father  gave  him 
— he  does  not  say  just  when  —  a  set  of  the  eighteenth- 
century  essayists,  of  whom  he  had  hitherto  been 
almost  entirely  ignorant.  He  devoured  them  all. 
Goldsmith's  papers  in  the  Bee  and  Citizen  of  the 
World,  and  the  rather  mild  humor  of  Colman  and 
Thornton  in  the  Connoisseur,  gave  him,  he  says,  all 
the  transports  of  a  first  love.  He  set  himself  to 
imitate  these  models  in  a  series  of  papers  for  a  Lon- 
don journal ;  he  began  to  write  theatrical  notices ;  he 
lost  no  opportunity  to  get  himself  naturalized  in 
Bohemia  by  cultivating  the  acquaintance  of  journal- 
ists, critics,  and  men  about  town;  he  diligently  ex- 

210 


LEIGH   HUNT 

tended  his  reading  in  that  kind  of  prose  in  which  he 
was  ambitious  to  excel.  He  was  especially  attracted 
by  the  brilliant  satire  and  caustic  wit  of  Vol- 
taire; and  as  he  could  not  read  him  in  the  original, 
went  through  the  greater  part  of  his  writings  in  trans- 
lation. He  was  not  frightened,  he  remarks  inciden- 
tally, by  Voltaire's  attacks  on  orthodoxy;  as,  indeed, 
it  was  impossible  he  should  be.  For  before  he  was 
out  of  his  teens,  Hunt  had  reduced  his  theological 
creed  to  the  one  proposition  that  every  created  being 
is  destined  to  eternal  happiness  —  or,  as  he  some- 
times puts  it,  everything  that  happens  must,  in  the 
long  run,  be  best  for  everybody;  and  he  rejected 
without  much  consideration  any  doctrines  that  con- 
flicted, or  even  seemed  to  conflict,  with  this  comfort- 
able belief.  His  political  creed  was  hardly  more 
definite  or  more  well  considered.  He  only  knew  he 
was  in  favor  of  change  and  reform  everywhere, 
and  opposed  to  all  institutions  intrenched  in  privi- 
lege. This  was  the  training  and  equipment  he 
brought  to  his  first  important  enterprise,  the  edit- 
ing of  a  radical  journal. 

It  was  in  1808  that,  in  concert  with  his  elder 
brother  John,  who  was  a  printer,  he  set  up  a  weekly 
paper,  of  which  the  two  brothers  were  to  be  joint 
editors  and  proprietors.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  this  was  the  time  when  Austerlitz,  Jena,  and 
Friedland  had  carried  Napoleon  almost  to  the  sum- 

211 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

mit  of  his  resistless  career;  when  those  sanguine 
young  Englishmen  who,  some  twenty  years  before, 
had  hailed  with  joyful  anticipation  the  revolutionary 
movement  in  France,  had  now  long  since  given  up 
those  early  hopes  and  gone  over  to  the  majority; 
when  conservatism  in  England  was  having  everything 
its  own  way,  and  to  utter  liberal  opinions  was  to  incur 
the  suspicion  of  disloyalty  to  the  British  constitution 
and  even  risk  of  personal  arrest.  To  set  up  a  liberal 
paper  at  such  a  moment  implied  a  little  courage; 
but  it  also  involved  just  that  defiance  of  authority 
and  chance  of  persecution  always  attractive  to 
Hunt.  The  Examiner  was  not  to  be  a  dangerously 
radical  sheet.  It  upheld  the  British  constitution. 
It  regarded  the  later  stages  of  the  French  Revolution 
with  abhorrence.  It  did  not  —  as  Hazlitt  did  — 
admire  Napoleon;  it  rather  advised  England  to  let 
him  alone  and  mind  her  own  business  —  advice 
that  England  has  never  been  very  ready  to  take,  and 
that  was  especially  impracticable  just  then.  The 
Examiner  was  to  stand  for  independence  and  political 
reform  at  home,  just  when  the  frightened  conserva- 
tism of  England  would  hear  nothing  of  reform.  Its 
purposes  were  wise  enough,  but  the  temper  in  which 
it  advocated  them  was  sometimes  a  little  sentimental, 
and  usually  not  a  little  lofty.  The  magisterial  assur- 
ance with  which  these  young  fellows  —  Hunt  was 
twenty-four  —  rebuked  and  instructed  statesmen 

212 


LEIGH   HUNT 

and  philosophers  was  certainly  very  superior.  Hunt 
himself  said,  many  years  afterward,  that  he  blushed 
at  remembering  the  contrast  between  the  simpleton 
he  was  and  the  sage  he  tried  to  seem.  Yet  assurance 
is  a  requisite  of  the  editor,  young  or  old;  he  must 
assume  that  virtue  if  he  have  it  not.  And  Hunt's 
political  writing  in  the  Examiner  will  not,  for  the 
most  part,  strike  the  reader  of  to-day  as  especially 
dogmatic  or  impracticable. 

To  Hunt,  however,  the  politics  of  the  Examiner 
was  probably  of  less  interest  than  its  literature. 
He  confesses  that  in  those  days  he  cared  more  for 
writing  verses  than  he  cared  for  the  public  good, 
and  would  have  been  glad  to  devote  himself  entirely 
to  poetry  and  philosophy.  As  it  was,  he  determined 
to  produce  in  the  Examiner,  to  use  his  own  phrase, 
"a  fusion  of  literary  taste  with  all  subjects  whatever." 
But  the  fusion  of  literary  taste  with  radical  politics 
in  the  columns  of  a  weekly  newspaper  is  not  always 
easy.  In  1811,  after  three  years  of  success  with  the 
Examiner,  he  set  up  beside  it  a  quarterly  journal 
called  the  Reflector,  which  might  serve  as  a  repository 
for  longer  and  more  distinctively  literary  articles 
and  for  poetry.  The  Reflector  shone  only  for  four 
numbers,  and  is  not  very  brilliant.  By  far  the 
best  things  in  it  are  three  essays  by  Lamb,  On 
the  Genius  of  Hogarth,  On  Shakespeare's  Tragedies, 
On  the  Behavior  of  Married  People,  and  his 

213 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

delightful  Farewell  to  Tobacco.  But  among  Hunt's 
own  contributions  are  three  or  four  of  those  chatty, 
sentimental  papers  on  bookish  subjects  which  form 
so  large  a  part  of  his  best  work  in  later  years.  One 
of  them,  A  Day  by  the  Fire,  is  in  his  very  best  vein. 

It  was  in  the  Reflector,  also,  that  Hunt  printed  his 
most  ambitious  attempt  at  poetry  so  far,  a  light 
satire  entitled  The  Feast  of  the  Poets.  Like  all  his 
other  early  poetry,  it  is  an  echo;  indeed,  as  the  title 
implies,  it  is  almost  a  parody  of  Sir  John  Suckling's 
Session  of  the  Poets.  With  a  young  man's  audacity 
he  deals  his  censure  right  and  left,  and  doubtless,  as 
he  said,  made  almost  every  living  poet  and  poetaster 
his  enemy.  Only  four  contemporaries  are  found 
worthy  to  sit  at  the  feast  of  Apollo  —  Scott,  Campbell, 
Southey,  and  Moore;  and  the  god  lectures  each  of 
these  in  turn  very  roundly  for  the  deficiencies  of  his 
work.  He  is  especially  severe  upon  Scott,  just  then, 
it  will  be  remembered,  at  the  height  of  his  poetic 
fame,  with  all  the  world  reading  Marmion  and  the 
Lady  of  the  Lake.  As  for  Coleridge  and  Words- 
worth, Apollo  contemptuously  shows  them  the  door, 
laughing 

"between  anger  and  mirth, 
And  cried, '  Were  there  ever  such  asses  on  earth?'" 

and  when  "Billy"  and  "Sam"  are  slow  to  go,  the 
god  puts  on  all  his  splendors  and  fairly  dazzles 

214 


LEIGH   HUNT 

them  out  of  his  presence.  But  the  verses,  though 
amusing,  are  not  so  clever  as  Suckling's;  their 
familiarity  passes  into  vulgarity,  and  their  critical 
verdicts  show  no  real  insight.  Hunt  afterward 
admitted  that  when  he  wrote  them  he  had  not  read 
Wordsworth  at  all,  and  knew  next  to  nothing  of 
Coleridge.  His  attack  on  Scott  was  prompted  by  a 
dislike  of  a  single  word  in  one  of  Scott's  notes  on 
Dryden.  Many  years  later  he  reworked  the  poem, 
taking  out  the  offending  passages;  but  the  new 
version,  though  quite  innocuous,  is  quite  flat.  It  is 
curious  to  note  that  Hunt's  poem  furnished  the  sug- 
gestion for  the  plan  of  a  much  cleverer  satire,  Lowell's 
Fable  for  Critics. 

Meantime,  fortune  had  been  kind  to  Mr.  Hunt. 
In  1809,  emboldened  by  the  success  of  the  Exam- 
iner, he  ventured  to  marry  and  set  up  a  modest  home. 
For  with  all  his  shiftlessness  he  was  not  a  Bohemian 
by  nature,  but  liked  a  certain  domestic  snugness. 
His  marriage  at  twenty-five  terminated  an  engage- 
ment contracted  when  he  was  seventeen  and  the 
lady  was  thirteen  years  of  age;  and  through  all 
those  eight  years  it  would  seem  clear  from  his 
letters  that,  in  spite  of  other  passing  fancies,  he  had 
been  a  devoted  lover.  Mrs.  Hunt  seems  to  have  been 
a  nice  young  person  —  not  pretty,  her  son  rather  un- 
gallantly  says,  but  with  pretty  tastes,  for  sketching, 
and  water-colors,  and  embroidery,  and  a  little  poetry, 
215 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

and  with  a  gift  to  read  verses  aloud  quite  remarkably 
well.  It  is  evident  from  their  letters  that  Hunt  was 
anxious  about  her  culture  and  during  their  engage- 
ment gave  her  a  good  deal  of  superior  advice.  One 
would  think  that  during  the  fifty  years  of  their 
married  life  she  might  have  had  opportunity  to 
repay  that  obligation.  Certainly  we  need  not  with- 
hold our  sympathy  from  the  woman  who,  in  constant 
illness  and  with  a  large  family  of  children,  main- 
tained for  half  a  century  something  like  order  and 
cheer  in  the  household  of  a  man  of  such  varied 
ineptitude  as  Leigh  Hunt.  The  two  or  three  sayings 
recorded  of  her  show  that  she  must  have  had  some 
imagination  and  some  spirit  —  she  said  when  first 
she  saw  a  grove  of  olive  trees  in  Italy  that  they 
"looked  as  if  they  only  grew  by  moonlight,"  which 
is  very  pretty  and  very  true;  and  when  Byron  said 
in  her  presence  one  day  that  Trelawney  had  been 
speaking  against  his  morals,  she  quietly  remarked, 
"It  is  the  first  time  I  ever  heard  of  them."  l 

But  it  was  in  February,  1813,  that  the  first  great 

^letter  written  in  1899,  by  Hunt' s  physician,  Dr.  George 
Bird,  and  recently  published  (The  Nation  (London)  Vol.  V,  No.  8, 
page  724,  Saturday,  May  22,  1909).  charges  Mrs.  Hunt  not  only 
with  feebleness  and  fretfulness,  but  with  mendacity  and  intemper- 
ance, and  ascribes  to  her  influence  most  of  Hunt's  financial  and 
other  troubles.  But  I  find  it  impossible  to  believe  these  charges 
in  the  face  of  Hunt's  own  statements  in  loving  praise  of  his  wife. 
His  remarkable  frankness  never  could  conceal  the  weaknesses 
even  of  his  nearest  friends. 

2l6 


LEIGH    HUNT 

piece  of  good  luck  befell  Hunt;  he  was  sent  to  jail. 
The  Examiner  had  from  the  start  earned  the  reputa- 
tion of  being  a  very  outspoken  journal.  It  had  been 
prosecuted  three  times  in  two  years,  but  had  thus  far 
escaped  conviction,  when  in  1812  appeared  the  famous 
article  on  the  Prince  Regent.  Hunt  had  criticised 
this  "first  gentleman  of  England "  very  freely  in 
an  article  of  the  Reflector;  but  the  paper  in  the 
Examiner  was  much  more  caustic.  Apropos  of  some 
fulsome  eulogies  of  the  Prince  in  the  Chronicle  and 
Postj  the  Examiner  broke  loose  after  this  fashion :  — 

"What  person  unacquainted  with  the  true  state  of 
the  case  would  imagine,  in  reading  these  astound- 
ing eulogies,  that  this  '  glory  of  the  people '  was  the 
subject  of  millions  of  shrugs  and  reproaches;  that 
this  'protector  of  the  arts'  had  named  a  wretched 
foreigner  his  historical  painter  in  disparagement  or 
in  ignorance  of  the  merits  of  his  own  countrymen; 
that  this  ' Maecenas  of  the  age'  patronized  not  a 
single  deserving  writer;  that  this  ' breather  of  elo- 
quence' could  not  say  a  dozen  decent  words,  if  we 
are  to  judge  at  least  from  what  he  said  to  his  regi- 
ment on  its  embarkation  for  Portugal;  that  this 
'  conqueror  of  hearts '  was  the  disappointer  of  hopes ; 
that  this  'exciter  of  desire'  (Bravo,  messieurs  of 
the  Post!),  this  Adonis  in  loveliness  was  a  corpulent 
man  of  fifty,  —  in  short,  this  delightful,  blissful,  wise, 

217 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

pleasurable,  honorable,  virtuous,  true,  and  immortal 
prince  was  a  violater  of  his  word,  a  libertine  over 
head  and  ears  in  disgrace,  a  despiser  of  domestic 
ties,  the  companion  of  gamblers,  and  demireps,  a 
man  who  has  just  closed  half  a  century  without  one 
single  claim  on  the  gratitude  of  his  country  or  the 
respect  of  posterity." 

All  which,  though  he  most  potently  and  power- 
fully believed,  Hunt  should  have  seen  it  not 
honesty  thus  to  have  set  down.  Certainly  no  gov- 
ernment, then  or  now,  that  would  save  a  shred  of 
the  divinity  that  doth  hedge  a  king  could  let  such 
language  go  unpunished.  After  some  months  of 
the  law's  delay  Hunt  and  his  brother  John  were 
both  sentenced  to  two  years'  imprisonment,  John  in 
Clerkenwell,  and  Leigh  in  Horsemonger  Lane. 

But  the  two  years  that  followed  were  far  from 
being  the  most  unpleasant  years  of  Hunt's  life.  He 
used  to  like  to  think  that  his  imprisonment  had 
impaired  his  health;  but  as  he  never  had  any  very 
serious  illness  and  lived  to  the  ripe  age  of  seventy- 
five,  I  think  he  was  mistaken  about  that.  After  a  few 
days  he  was  given  a  pleasant  suite  of  two  rooms,  one 
of  which  he  proceeded  to  decorate  with  a  wall- 
paper showing  a  lattice  of  roses  climbing  up  the 
sides  of  the  room,  and  blue  sky  and  clouds  on  the 
ceiling,  so  that  —  like  a  good  deal  of  his  other  work 

218 


LEIGH   HUNT 

—  it  must  have  been  all  very  pretty  and  in  very 
bad  taste.  He  brought  into  this  room  a  choice 
library  —  largely  made  up  of  the  Parnaso  Italiano  — 
with  busts,  and  pictures,  and  his  piano.  His  wife 
was  with  him,  so  that  neither  his  literary  nor  his  do- 
mestic life  suffered  any  serious  interruption.  In 
fact,  his  eldest  daughter  and  his  longest  poem  were 
both  born  inside  the  jail.  He  had  a  garden,  too, 
that  furnished  him  with  flowers  of  his  own  raising, 
and  gave  him  about  as  much  exercise  and  as  much 
scenery  as  he  ever  really  cared  for.  His  friends 
were  allowed  to  write  him  freely.  He  enjoyed 
enforced  regularity  of  habit;  he  was  boarded  and 
lodged  —  perhaps  for  the  only  time  in  his  life  — 
without  any  anxiety  from  creditors;  and  with  read- 
ing and  writing  and  music  and  little  dinners  sent  in 
by  friends  over  the  way,  he  made  it  a  life  of  elegant 
retirement.  On  the  whole,  one  thinks  it  was  not  a 
heavy  price  to  pay  for  the  privilege  of  writing  a  very 
telling  libel  and  wearing  a  faint  halo  of  martyrdom 
in  the  cause  of  civil  liberty  ever  after.  And  of 
course  it  widened  his  reputation  instantly.  A  good 
many  people  of  influence,  hitherto  strangers  to  him, 
took  occasion  to  manifest  in  various  ways  their  sym- 
pathy with  the  persecuted  champion  of  free  speech. 
Not  only  old  friends  like  the  Lambs  and  Cowden 
Clarke  came  to  visit  him  in  prison,  but  Hazlitt  came, 
and  Bentham,  and  James  Mill,  and  Haydon,  and 
219 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Shelley,  and  Byron,  and  Moore,  and  hosts  of  lesser 
folk.  And  when  he  came  out,  young  Keats,  who  had 
not  yet  met  him,  wrote  a  sonnet  to  commemorate  the 
event. 

After  his  liberation  Hunt  felt  that  he  might  with 
some  assurance  of  recognition  turn  his  attention 
more  exclusively  to  literature.  Though  he  con- 
tinued to  edit  the  Examiner  with  his  brother  until 
1821,  he  did  not  venture  any  further  dangerous 
meddling  with  politics,  but  made  his  paper  more 
largely  a  journal  of  criticism  and  letters.  He  had 
published  in  1816  his  most  ambitious  poem,  The 
Story  of  Rimini,  and  three  years  later  issued  a 
collected  edition  of  all  his  verse.  He  changed  his 
residence  —  probably  for  reasons  easily  guessed  — 
a  half-dozen  times  in  a  half-dozen  years;  but  where- 
ever  he  was,  his  modest  home  was  always  open  to 
his  friends,  and  there  were  flowers  and  music  and 
books  and  endless  literary  chat.  All  lovers  of  Keats 
will  remember  his  pleasant  sonnet 

"Brimful  of  the  friendliness 
That  in  a  little  cottage  I  have  found"  — 

that  little  cottage  in  the  Vale  of  Health  where  he 
wrote  that  other  and  better  sonnet  The  Grasshopper 
and  the  Cricket  and  the  characteristic  lines  Sleep 
and  Poetry.  Shelley,  then  living  at  Great  Marlow, 
was  through  those  years  Hunt's  close  friend,  and 

220 


LEIGH   HUNT 

often  came  over  to  Hampstead  to  stay  for  days 
together.  Byron  condescended  to  call  several 
times  upon  him.  And  Hunt's  correspondence  from 
1816  to  1820  gives  glimpses  of  many  other  pleasant 
people  of  more  or  less  note  in  the  world  of  literature, 
some  of  them  old  friends  and  some  of  them  new,  that 
often  looked  in  upon  him.  In  those  days  he  was  at 
his  best  as  a  companion  — sprightly,  vivacious,  quick- 
witted, with  a  certain  courtly  grace  of  manner. 
He  was  an  excellent  reader  and  mimic,  told  a  story 
capitally,  sang  a  simple  song  neatly,  was  ready  with 
some  pert  remark  or  pretty  fancy,  and  had  a  head 
full  of  superficial  ideas  that  he  had  never  taken  much 
pains  to  assert.  Charles  Cowden  Clarke,  who  knew 
a  great  many  charming  people  in  his  day,  declared 
that  Hunt  was  "fascinating,  animated,  and  winning, 
to  a  degree  of  which  I  have  never  seen  the  parallel "; 
and  the  more  impartial  Hazlitt  gives  a  picture  of  him 
in  those  days  which  seems  as  truthful  as  it  is  vivid : 

"Hunt  has  a  fine  vinous  spirit  and  tropical  blood 
in  his  veins;  but  he  is  better  at  his  own  table.  He 
has  a  great  flow  of  pleasantry  and  delightful  animal 
spirits,  but  his  hits  do  not  tell  like  Lamb's;  you 
cannot  repeat  them  the  next  day.  He  requires  not 
only  to  be  appreciated,  but  to  have  a  select  circle 
of  admirers  and  devotees,  to  feel  himself  quite  at 
home.  ...  He  manages  an  argument  adroitly, 

221 


A   GROUP   OF  ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

is  genteel  and  gallant,  and  has  a  set  of  by-phrases 
and  quaint  allusions  always  at  hand  to  produce  a 
laugh.  If  he  has  a  fault,  it  is  that  he  does  not  listen 
so  well  as  he  speaks,  is  impatient  of  interruption,  and 
is  fond  of  being  looked  \ip  to  without  considering 
by  whom.  I  believe,  however,  he  has  pretty  well 
seen  the  folly  of  this." 

This  fault,  however,  in  spite  of  Hazlitt's  generous 
judgment,  I  think  Hunt  had  not  then  outgrown  — 
nor  ever  did  outgrow.  He  was  ambitious  of  the 
fame  of  a  literary  patron.  He  defended  in  the 
Examiner  the  character  and  the  writings  of  Shelley. 
He  commended  without  reservation  the  early  volumes 
of  Keats,  that  everybody  else  neglected  or  derided. 
But,  though  his  praise  was  very  genuine,  it  was  a 
positive  injury  to  both  Shelley  and  Keats;  for  it 
was  given  in  such  a  tone  of  patronizing  personal 
friendship  as  to  make  it  possible  for  the  hostile  critics 
to  represent  these  two  great  poets  as  merely  the 
disciples  and  imitators  of  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt.  The 
abusive  articles  on  The  Cockney  School  of  Poets 
that  defiled  the  pages  of  Blackwood's  were  provoked 
chiefly  by  Hunt,  and  their  bitterest  denunciations 
levelled  at  him.  Yet  I  think  that  Hunt,  while 
justly  angered  by  them,  took  a  secret  satisfaction  at 
being  recognized  as  the  head  and  sponsor  of  a  new 
school  of  poets.  It  pleased  him  to  believe  that  he 

222 


LEIGH    HUNT 

was  now  suffering  as  the  leader  of  a  new  and  liberal 
movement  in  poetry  as  well  as  in  politics. 

The  cool  reception  given  to  his  own  verses  even 
by  the  partial  judgment  of  his  friends  ought  to  have 
shaken  his  conviction  that  he  was  himself  a  poet. 
Perhaps  it  did.  At  all  events,  after  1819,  he  aban- 
doned poetry  for  a  number  of  years,  and,  indeed, 
never  after  attempted  anything  ambitious  in  verse. 
Late  in  that  year  1819,  however,  he  tried  his  hand 
at  something  he  had  found  he  could  do  much  better. 
He  set  up  a  paper  made  up  mostly  of  essays 
written  by  himself  with  occasional  contributions 
from  others,  and  now  and  then  some  choice  passages 
selected^from  an  old  or  little  known  author.  The 
Indicator,  as  he  called  this  periodical,  was  issued 
weekly,  and  ran  for  sixty-six  numbers.  It  contains 
the  best  specimens  of  that  familiar,  chatty  essay 
which  Hunt  had  begun  to  write  in  the  Reflector,  and 
which  he  wrote  better  than  any  one  else.  He  always 
looked  back  upon  it  with  peculiar  fondness,  and 
loved  to  remember  that  such  a  paper  had  pleased 
Lamb,  and  another  Shelley,  and  yet  another  Hazlitt. 

Through  all  these  years,  as  always,  Hunt  was 
sadly  in  need  of  money.  At  some  time  not  long  after 
his  liberation  from  prison  Shelley  had  given  him 
outright  fourteen  hundred  pounds  to  extricate  him 
from  his  debts;  but,  as  he  naively  says,  "I  was  not 
extricated,  for  I  had  not  yet  learned  to  be  careful." 
223 


A   GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Harassed  by  these  difficulties,  increased  now  by  the 
needs  of  a  growing  family  and  the  ill-health  of  his 
wife,  and  finding  the  strain  upon  his  own  energies 
caused  by  writing  nearly  the  whole  of  the  Examiner 
and  the  Indicator  was  getting  unendurable,  he  gave 
up  both  papers  in  1821,  and  entered  upon  a  new  and 
very  ill-starred  enterprise.  He  accepted  the  invi- 
tation of  Shelley,  then  in  Italy,  to  join  him  and 
Byron  there  in  the  conduct  of  a  new  review,  called 
the  Liberal,  to  be  edited  in  Italy  but  printed  by  John 
Hunt  in  London.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  scheme 
must  have  been  attractive  to  Hunt.  He  accounted 
Shelley  his  best  friend  —  with  good  reason.  He  had 
longed  for  years  to  see  Italy.  And  as  for  the  pro- 
posed review,  he  thought  the  name  of  Byron,  then  at 
the  height  of  his  fame,  would  assure  its  success.  But 
the  plan  was  unlucky  from  the  start.  A  week  after 
his  arrival,  Shelley  met  his  tragic  death,  and  Hunt, 
practically  penniless,  was  thrown  upon  the  rather 
cool  generosity  of  Byron.  Byron  was  then  living 
at  Pisa  with  La  Guiccioli  and  his  very  nondescript 
menage;  and  for  a  time  the  Hunts  attempted  to 
lodge  under  the  same  roof.  But  Byron  found  Hunt 
limp  and  helpless,  Mrs.  Hunt  and  the  children 
vulgar;  while  Hunt  found  Byron  exacting  and 
penurious,  and  Mrs.  Hunt  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with  his  odious  establishment.  Obviously  the  rela- 
tions were  impossible.  The  Liberal  was  started; 

224 


LEIGH   HUNT 

but  Byron,  never  having  cared  much  for  it,  now 
cared  nothing,  and  would  contribute  nothing  save 
matter  that  Murray  didn't  dare  to  publish,  and  John 
Hunt  got  into  prison  again  for  publishing.  The  first 
three  numbers  contained  Shelley's  fine  translation 
of  Goethe's  Walpurgis  Nacht  and  some  other 
beautiful  fragments  he  had  left,  and  Hazlitt's 
inimitable  paper  My  First  Acquaintance  with  Poets; 
but  Hunt  was  left  without  further  assistance,  and 
with  the  fourth  number  the  Liberal  died.  Not  long 
after  Byron  started  on  his  Greek  expedition,  and 
Hunt  was  left  to  shift  for  himself.  He  had  not  money 
enough  to  take  his  large  family  back  to  England,  and 
stayed  on  two  years  more  in  Florence,  supported  — 
Heaven  knows  how !  Probably  by  his  contributions 
to  London  papers,  with  generous  contributions  from 
Mrs.  Shelley.  Finally,  in  1825,  a  London  publisher 
advanced  money  enough  to  bring  him  back,  and  the 
homesick  wanderer  found  himself  again  in  the  fields 
of  his  beloved  Hampstead. 

This  chapter  of  his  life  would,  however,  not  have 
been  so  very  unfortunate  if  it  had  ended  there.  But 
two  years  later,  finding  it  necessary  to  furnish  some- 
thing to  the  publisher,  Colburn,  in  return  for  the 
money  advanced  him,  Hunt  sat  down  to  write  the 
story  of  his  Italian  life.  He  had  intended  at  first  to 
make  it  only  that ;  but  as  all  the  world  was  full  just 
then  of  the  fame  of  the  great  poet  so  recently  dead, 
Q  225 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

he  decided  to  alter  and  enlarge  his  book  into  an 
Account  of  Lord  Byron  and  his  Principal  Contem- 
poraries. And  as  this  universal  grief  and  praise 
jarred  a  little  on  his  own  memories,  he  could  not 
resist  the  temptation  to  give  the  world  a  picture  of 
Lord  Byron  as  he  had  known  him.  It  was  the  worst 
mistake  he  ever  made.  In  the  preface  to  the  first 
edition  he  confesses  —  or  professes  —  that  his  first 
inclination  on  finishing  the  book  was  to  put  it  in  the 
fire;  it  would  have  been  better  for  him  had  he  fol- 
lowed that  inclination.  Not  that  the  book  is  not 
true  enough.  Doubtless  most  of  the  things  said  in 
it  about  Byron  are  entirely  true,  —  there  were 
meannesses  enough  in  Byron  ;  but  it  was  not 
necessary  to  say  them,  and  it  was  peculiarly  unbecom- 
ing in  Hunt  to  say  them.  For,  however  ungracious 
his  temper  may  have  been,  Byron  had  certainly  laid 
Hunt  under  very  material  obligation.  By  Hunt's 
own  confession  he  had  paid  Hunt's  passage  to 
Italy,  he  had  lodged  him  in  his  own  palace,  he  had 
paid  him  at  one  time  or  another  three  or  four  hun- 
dred pounds,  he  had  relinquished  to  him  all  share 
in  the  profits  of  the  Liberal.  After  this  Hunt  should 
certainly  not  have  felt  at  liberty  to  write  a  book  full 
of  petty  chatter  and  scandal  —  that  Byron  dreaded 
getting  fat,  that  Byron  couldn't  bear  to  see  women 
eat,  that  Byron  had  no  beard,  and  some  women 
liked  him  better  for  it  and  some  didn't  like  him  so 

226 


LEIGH   HUNT 

well,  with  infinitude  of  rubbish  of  that  sort.  And  if 
Byron  in  his  moments  of  vexation  had  said  some 
nasty  things  to  Hunt,  Hunt  now  contrived  to  say 
some  very  nasty  things  in  reply.  To  charge  Byron 
with  licentiousness  was  only  to  echo  the  charge  of  the 
world;  but  to  say  that  Byron  was  stingily  careful 
that  his  pleasures  should  not  cost  him  too  much,  — 
that  "no  Englishman  ever  contrived  to  practise 
more  rakery  and  more  economy  at  one  and  the  same 
time,"  —  this  was  ingeniously  cruel.  And  for  Mr. 
Leigh  Hunt  to  say  that  Lord  Byron  never  liked  to 
pay  a  debt,  —  that  was  effrontery  rising  to  the  sub- 
lime. No  man  is  a  hero  to  his  valet ;  but  if  the  valet 
attempt  to  write  the  life  of  the  hero,  we  know  it  is 
not  the  hero  whose  reputation  is  likely  to  suffer.  It 
should  be  said  to  the  credit  of  Hunt,  however,  that 
although  he  was  at  first  very  angry  at  the  contemp- 
tuous criticism  the  book  received  and  talked  back 
badly  in  the  preface  to  the  second  edition,  he  did 
afterward  come  to  see  his  error  and  acknowledged 
it  very  handsomely  in  the  Autobiography,  twenty 
years  later. 

The  rest  of  his  story  may  be  passed  over  more 
briefly.  He  had  yet  thirty  years  of  life,  but  after 
the  publication  of  the  Byron  in  1828,  he  settled 
down  to  the  work  of  magazinist  and  reviewer. 
In  the  next  twenty-five  years  he  set  up  several  other 
227 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

periodicals,  —  eight  of  them,  —  for  which  he  fur- 
nished most  or  all  of  the  copy.  His  various  books 
issued  from  time  to  time,  The  Seer,  The  Town, 
Table  Talk,  Men,  Women,  and  Books,  were  made 
up  of  essays  selected  from  these  and  his  earlier 
journals.  Although  we  think  of  him  as  an  easy- 
going dilettante,  he  must  sometimes  have  toiled 
terribly.  For  example,  from  September  4,  1830, 
to  February  13,  1832,  he  ran  a  daily  paper,  and  wrote 
it  all  himself.  To  be  sure,  it  was  of  four  pages  only; 
but  if  any  one  will  propose  to  himself  the  task  of  writ- 
ing four  small  folio  pages  of  print  six  days  in  a  week, 
for  a  year  and  a  half,  he  will  not  be  surprised  that  the 
work,  as  Hunt  says,  "  nearly  killed  me."  But  after 
about  this  time  the  sky  began  to  brighten.  He  did 
not  meddle  with  politics  any  longer;  but  after  the 
Reform  measures  of  1832,  politics  seemed  to  be 
coming  his  way,  and  a  good  many  younger  men 
remembered  his  services  to  liberalism  in  the  days 
when  liberalism  had  been  very  unpopular.  Even 
his  old  enemies  softened  to  him.  Blackwood's, 
the  worst  of  them  all,  invited  him  to  become  a  con- 
tributor and  made  amends  for  the  hard  words  of 
fifteen  years  before  in  Wilson's  famous  sentence: 
"The  animosities  are  mortal,  but  the  humanities 
live  forever."  His  own  temper  became  more 
mellowed,  his  judgments  broader  and  more  urbane. 
The  best  of  his  old  friends  wrere  gone,  Shelley, 

228 


LEIGH   HUNT 

Keats,  Hazlitt,  Lamb;  but  after  about  1835  he 
enjoyed  the  acquaintance  of  a  new  generation  of 
journalists  and  men  of  letters  who  all  had  a  generous 
feeling  for  him  and  didn't  take  him  too  seriously. 
His  best  friends  in  this  group  were  Macaulay,  John 
Forster,  and  Carlyle.  It  is  a  little  strange  that  the 
rugged  sage  of  Chelsea,  who  had  no  patience  with  the 
aesthetic  type  and  regarded  such  a  man  as  Keats 
"a  chosen  vessel  of  hell,"  should  have  taken  so 
kindly  to  his  shiftless  neighbor  in  the  next  street. 
Yet  in  spite  of  his  contempt  for  Hunt's  hugger- 
mugger  housekeeping,  it  is  evident  that  his  rigor 
did  thaw  up  before  this  vivacious  little  man,  "chat- 
ting idly  melodious  as  bird  on  bough,"  who  came  in 
every  other  night  to  hear  Mrs.  Carlyle  sing  old  Scotch 
songs  and  share  the  evening  oatmeal.  "A  man 
of  genius,"  says  Carlyle,  "in  a  very  strict  sense  of 
that  word  ...  of  graceful  fertility,  of  clearness,  lov- 
ingness,  truthfulness,  of  childlike  open  character." 
And,  in  turn,  better  or  truer  thing  was  never  said  of 
the  real  Thomas  Carlyle  than  Leigh  Hunt  said:  "I 
believe  that  what  Mr.  Carlyle  loves  better  than  his 
fault-finding  with  all  its  eloquence  is  the  face  of  any 
human  creature  that  looks  suffering  and  loving  and 
sincere."  And  though  it  has  been  both  affirmed  and 
denied,  I  have  little  doubt  that  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle 
is  the  Jenny  of  that  most  dainty  and  rememberable 
bit  of  verse  Hunt  ever  wrote,  — 
229 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

"Jenny  kissed  me  when  we  met, 

Jumping  from  the  chair  she  sat  in ; 
Time,  you  thief  who  love  to  get 

Sweets  into  your  list,  put  that  in : 
Say  I'm  weary,  say  I'm  sad, 

Say  that  health  and  wealth  have  miss'd  me, 
Say  I'm  growing  old,  but  add, 
Jenny  kiss'd  me !" 

The  last  ten  years  of  his  life  were  passed  in  com- 
parative ease.  It  is  true  he  never  gained  any  mas- 
tery of  the  economies  of  life;  but  an  annuity  of  a 
hundred  and  twenty  pounds  from  the  Shelley  family 
and  a  pension  of  two  hundred  pounds  from  the 
Civil  List  made  that  mastery  needless.  His  bland 
optimism  grew  on  him  in  his  declining  years,  and  he 
diffused  a  mild  glow  of  universal  benevolence  and 
hopefulness.  He  had  made  up  all  his  old  quarrels, 
forgotten  all  his  old  resentments.  The  one  ungener- 
ous reference  to  him  in  those  years,  the  too  faithful 
portrait  of  Harold  Skimpole  in  Dickens'  Bleak 
House,  it  is  said  he  alone  of  all  readers  did  not 
recognize  until  it  was  pointed  out  to  him.  His 
fame,  though  far  more  lowly  than  the  dreams  of  his 
youth  had  promised,  was  assured.  Everybody 
knew  him,  and  everybody  liked  him.  There  was 
hardly  an  artist  or  man  of  letters  among  his  con- 
temporaries who  had  not  some  kindly  word  for  the 
sprightly,  bright-eyed  old  poet  and  critic  who,  in  this 
present  evil  world,  never  lost  his  cheerful  assurance 

230 


LEIGH   HUNT 

that  all  things  are  turning  out  best  for  every- 
body. He  died  August  28,  1839,  at  the  age  of 
seventy-five. 

II 

After  the  lapse  of  half  a  century  the  man  still 
keeps  a  pleasant  place  in  our  memory.  He  advo- 
cated good  causes  always,  with  however  much  un- 
wisdom; he  always  thought  well  of  human  nature, 
—  too  well,  —  and  his  easy,  nonchalant  cheerfulness 
has  doubtless  contributed  something  to  the  gladness 
of  the  world.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  it  is  impossible  to  have  the  highest 
respect  either  for  his  opinions  or  his  temper.  The 
great  man  cannot  take  life  so  easily  as  Leigh  Hunt 
always  took  it.  Optimism  like  his  means  that  the 
optimist  cannot  or  will  not  see  life  as  it  is,  and  feel 
all  the  weight  of  this  unintelligible  world.  Hunt 
says  that  once  or  twice  in  his  career  he  was  troubled 
with  hypochondria,  which  took  the  form  of  despon- 
dent wrestling  with  insoluble  moral  problems,  the 
origin  of  evil  being  a  nightmare  that  gave  him 
especial  agony.  But  he  soon  decided  that  the 
trouble  was  due  to  his  liver;  in  his  normal  moods 
he  was  quite  indifferent  to  such  disquieting  questions. 
The  fundamental  defect  in  Hunt's  moral  nature, 
I  take  it,  was  an  almost  entire  lack  of  the  sense  of 
justice,  in  the  relations  of  men  to  each  other  and  to  a 
231 


A    GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

Higher  Power.  It  was  a  matter  of  familiar  comment 
among  his  friends  that  he  could  not  distinguish 
between  a  loan  and  a  gift,  and  never  thought  of  re- 
paying either  one.  A  promissory  note  was  an  ever- 
lasting mystery  to  him.  He  says  in  the  Life  of 
Byron:  "I  have  some  peculiar  notions  on  the  sub- 
ject of  money  .  .  .  which  will  be  found  to  involve 
considerable  differences  of  opinion  with  the  commu- 
nity. .  .  .  Among  other  things  in  which  I  differ 
in  point  of  theory  I  have  not  that  horror  of  being 
under  obligation  which  is  thought  an  essential 
refinement  in  money  matters."  Though  he  adds, 
with  unconscious  humor,  that  in  practice  he  has  often 
been  obliged  to  conform  to  the  usage  of  society. 
But  he  seemed  to  have  just  as  little  conception  of 
obligation  of  every  other  sort.  For  lack  of  it,  his 
ethics  were  a  muddle  of  mawkish  sentiment  and 
lukewarm  benevolence.  He  himself  professed,  in  his 
own  words,  "to  partake  of  none  of  the  ordinary 
notions  of  merit  and  demerit  with  regard  to  any 
one,"  and  thought  himself  "neither  a  bit  better  or 
worse  than  any  other  man."  He  who  thinks  so, 
or  pretends  to  think  so,  disqualifies  himself  at  once 
for  any  moral  criticism  or  any  just  view  of  the  great 
facts  of  human  life.  A  theologian  would  say  he  had 
no  sense  of  sin  —  and  the  theologian  would  be  right. 
He  had,  instead  of  that,  a  dread  and  hatred  of  all 
pain,  by  whomsoever  inflicted  and  for  whatsoever 
232 


LEIGH    HUNT 

reason.  He  disliked  good  old  Izaak  Walton  be- 
cause he  found  cruel  pleasure  in  catching  little 
fishes;  and  he  disliked  the  Jehovah  of  the  Old 
Testament  because  He  threatens  to  punish  thieves, 
and  murderers,  and  adulterers,  and  that  sort  of 
folk.  To  punishment  he  was  mildly  but  firmly 
opposed ;  it  was  a  form  of  payment.  Dante,  though 
a  great  poet,  he  conceived  to  be  "one  of  the  most 
childishly  mistaken  men  that  ever  lived,  a  bigoted 
and  exasperated  man,"  and  he  chastises  what  he 
calls  the  "infernal  opinions"  of  the  great  Italian 
with  much  ardor.  He  was  often  concerned  over 
the  intemperate  earnestness  of  good  people,  and  in 
his  earlier  years  wrote  for  the  Examiner  a  series  of 
papers  on  The  Folly  and  Danger  of  Methodism 
that  are  rather  amusing.  Later  in  life,  he  prepared 
a  little  pocket  volume  —  which  John  Forster  got 
printed  for  him  —  containing  his  own  creed  and 
ritual,  and  entitled,  Christianism,  Belief  and  Un- 
belief Reconciled.  The  title  may  perhaps  remind 
us  of  Carlyle's  scornful  proposal  for  a  Heaven  and 
Hell  Amalgamation  Society;  but  Hunt's  method 
of  reconciliation  is  very  simple  —  you  have  only  to 
believe  what  you  like  and  disbelieve  everything  else, 
and  the  thing  is  done.  All  which,  of  course,  only 
proves  that  Hunt  had  no  conception  how  infinitely 
serious  a  thing  is  this  human  life  of  ours,  and  how 
perplexed  and  difficult,  in  the  face  of  all  its  mystery, 
233 


A  GROUP  OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

is  any  deep  belief  at  all.  He  shared  his  friend 
Shelley's  refusal  of  all  law  and  penalty,  and  Shelley's 
confidence  in  the  power  of  benevolent  impulse; 
but  he  never  felt  Shelley's  pathetic  despair,  or 
Shelley's  tragic  conviction  that  the  world  is  out  of 
joint. 

It  was  this  very  shallowness,  both  of  opinion  and 
feeling,  joined  with  a  certain  bland  assurance  of 
manner,  that  made  him  often  a  difficult  opponent 
in  controversy.  His  critics  charged  him,  and  with 
some  justice,  of  inability  to  understand  the  com- 
plexity of  the  questions  he  decided  so  jauntily,  of  a 
flippancy  in  the  treatment  of  great  passions  that 
often  passed  into  vulgarity,  of  a  lack  of  reverence 
before  great  truths  that  often  amounted  to  something 
like  blasphemy.  Yet  he  always  took  himself  very 
seriously,  and  was  sure,  if  possible,  to  assume  the 
attitude  of  amiable  but  injured  virtue.  "If  I  have 
any  two  good  qualities,"  he  says  complacently, 
"to  set  off  against  my  defects,  it  is  that  I  am  not 
vindictive,  and  that  I  speak  the  truth."  I  think  he 
did  mean  to  speak  the  truth,  as  far  as  he  saw  it,  and 
he  was  not  vindictive;  but  he  had  a  habit  of  mind 
far  more  irritating  than  vindictiveness  —  the  habit 
of  cheerful  endurance  of  wrongs  purely  imaginary. 
The  most  utterly  exasperating  thing  a  man  can  do 
is  to  meekly  forgive  you  for  an  injury  you  never  com- 
mitted ;  and  this  treatment  Hunt  sometimes  accorded 

234 


LEIGH   HUNT 

to  his  critics  as  well  as  to  those  people  who  were 
guilty  of  supposing  he  would  pay  the  money  he 
owed. 

The  charge  the  enemies  of  Hunt  used  to  make 
oftenest  was  that  both  in  his  life  and  in  his  writings 
he  was  an  under-bred,  vulgar  person.  "I  wish," 
said  Napier,  "  that  Hunt  would  write  a  gentlemanly 
article  for  the  Edinburgh"  That  was  a  charge 
likely  to  be  made  against  anybody  of  pronounced 
democratic  notions  in  the  England  of  the  early 
nineteenth  century;  and  as  made  against  Hunt,  it 
was  never  exactly  just.  Yet  Hunt's  character 
always  did  lack  distinction.  There  was  nothing 
robust  or  severe  about  him.  He  was  a  great  deal  of 
a  sentimentalist.  He  notes  that  the  first  words 
he  heard  in  Italy  were  "fiore"  and  "donne"  — 
flowers  and  ladies.  In  Florence  he  congratulated 
himself  that  he  was  lodged  in  the  Via  Belle  Donne, 
till  he  found  it  was  very  nasty  and  very  noisy.  The 
one  English  prose-writer  he  admired  most  was 
Sterne;  my  uncle  Toby  he  pronounced  the  ideal 
Christian,  and  Sterne  himself  the  wisest  man  since 
Shakespeare.  Any  man  who  could  say  that  must 
himself  be  something  less  than  a  gentleman.  The 
truth  is,  sentimentalism  is  always  vulgar.  No  man 
can  live  so  largely  among  the  mere  prettinesses  of 
life,  indifferent  to  its  noblest  joys  and  noblest  pains, 
without  losing  something  of  that  power  of  vigorous 
235 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

and  manly  judgment  upon  which  good  taste  —  I  had 
almost  said  good  morals  —  depends. 

Ill 

If  the  critic  is  charged  with  paying  too  much  atten- 
tion to  Hunt  the  man,  he  may  reply  there  is  no 
better  way  of  understanding  Hunt  the  writer.  For 
all  his  literary  work  shows  the  same  charm  and  the 
same  limitations  that  we  have  found  in  his  character. 
As  to  his  poetry,  there  is  no  need  to  say  much.  He 
was  unable  to  portray  or  to  appreciate  genuine  pas- 
sion ;  he  had  little  sympathy  with  the  more  strenuous 
forms  of  action  and  suffering.  All  the  higher  reaches 
of  poetry  were,  therefore,  inaccessible  to  him.  That 
is  the  cause  of  his  failure  in  the  most  ambitious  of 
his  poems,  The  Story  of  Rimini.  To  retell  that 
story  of  Paolo  and  Francesca,  told  once  for  all  with 
the  simplicity  and  reticence  of  extremest  pathos,  is 
a  daring  venture  for  any  poet;  but  for  Leigh  Hunt 
to  attempt  it  was  the  sheerest  folly.  He  tried  to 
give  to  that  most  poignant  of  tragedies  a  certain 
gentle  tenderness  and  grace;  the  results,  at  the  su- 
preme points  of  the  narrative,  are  nothing  less  than 
astounding.  For  example,  Hunt's  version  of  that 
scene  where  together  the  lovers  read  of  Lancelot 
begins  thus :  — 

"So  sat  she  fixed;  and  so  observed  was  she 
Of  one  who  at  the  door  stood  tenderly, 
236 


LEIGH   HUNT 

Paulo,  —  who  from  a  window  seeing  her 

Go  straight  across  the  lawn,  and  guessing  where, 

Had  thought  she  was  in  tears,  and  found,  that  day, 

His  usual  efforts  vain  to  keep  away. 

'May  I  come  in ?'  said  he:  —  it  made  her  start  — 

That  smiling  voice ;  she  colored,  pressed  her  heart 

A  moment,  as  for  breath,  and  then  with  free 

And  usual  tone  said,  *O  yes,  certainly/" 

How  any  human  being  could  first  read  his  Dante  and 
then  write  such  lines  as  these,  is  more  than  I  can 
comprehend.  It  is  one  of  the  most  incredible  lapses 
into  pure  banality  in  English  verse.  And  there  are 
other  passages  almost  as  bad.  Wherever  the  feeling 
should  be  intense  and  concentrated,  he  dilutes  it 
into  sentimental  commonplace.  As  Laertes  says  in 
the  play  — 

"Thought  and  affliction,  passion,  hell  itself, 
He  turns  to  favor  and  to  prettiness." 

The  only  parts  of  the  poem,  therefore,  that  have 
any  merits  are  the  unessential  parts,  descriptive  and 
decorative  —  gardens  and  processions,  and  that 
sort  of  thing.  The  critics  professed  to  be  scandal- 
ized by  the  immorality  of  the  poem;  which  was 
absurd,  especially  so  in  a  public  that  could  accept 
with  only  mild  and  half-admiring  expostulation 
Byron's  worst  verses.  Indeed,  Hunt  had  changed 
the  story  a  little  so  that,  as  he  said,  he  might  teach 
a  useful  lesson  as  to  the  fatal  results,  not  of  passion 

237 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

in  the  lovers,  but  of  deceit  in  the  elder  brother.  The 
poem  is  moral  enough;  but  it  does  show  instances 
of  a  curious  sort  of  offence  against  good  taste  found 
too  often  in  all  Hunt's  writing,  prose  as  well  as 
verse.  Like  Sterne,  whom  he  admired  so  much, 
he  had  a  kind  of  indelicate  delicacy,  an  affectation 
of  innocence,  that  often  passed  into  mawkishness 
and  sometimes  into  pruriency. 

The  most  important  thing,  however,  to  be  said 
about  the  Story  of  Rimini  is  that  it  was  the  first 
considerable  attempt  in  the  nineteenth  century  to 
revive  the  rhyming  ten-syllable  couplet  in  an  essen- 
tially new  form.  The  lines  are  run  on,  the  pauses 
are  varied,  the  rigidity  of  the  couplet  is  entirely 
broken  up.  Hunt  said  that  he  owed  the  suggestion 
of  the  verse  to  Dryden;  it  is  obvious,  too,  that 
he  was  influenced  by  Chaucer,  whose  fluency  and 
nai'vet^  he  tried  to  reproduce.  In  the  preface  to  the 
collected  edition  of  his  poems,  issued  in  1832,  he 
remarks :  "  It  seems  to  me  that,  beautiful  as  are  the 
compositions  which  the  English  language  possesses 
in  the  heroic  couplet,  both  by  deceased  and  living 
writers,  it  remains  for  some  poet  hereafter  to  per- 
fect the  versification  by  making  a  just  compromise 
between  the  inharmonious  freedom  of  our  old  poets 
in  general  and  the  regularity  of  Dryden ;  who,  noble 
as  his  management  of  it  is,  beats  after  all  too  much 
upon  the  rhyme."  This  was  what  Hunt  attempted 

238 


LEIGH   HUNT 

to  do.  His  attempt  was  not  very  successful ;  it  was 
impossible  it  should  be  with  a  story  of  intense  passion 
like  the  Rimini.  But  he  must  be  given  the  credit 
of  being  the  first  to  see  and  state  the  possibilities 
of  this  essentially  new  metrical  form.  Keats,  who 
unquestionably  learned  it  from  Hunt,  used  it  im- 
mediately in  all  his  early  verses,  and  with  signal 
success,  a  little  later,  in  the  Lamia;  and  several 
more  recent  poets  — notably  William  Morris — have 
proved  how  well  it  is  adapted  to  easy,  deliberate, 
highly  decorated  narrative  poetry. 

Some  of  Hunt's  other  and  less  pretentious  narrative 
poems,  like  the  Hero  and  Leander,  are  better  than 
the  Rimini;  but  in  them  all  he  is  at  his  best  when 
passion  and  action  are  at  a  mimimum,  and  he  can 
find  opportunity  for  the  play  of  a  leisurely  fancy. 
Among  English  poets  his  favorite  was  Spenser,  in 
whose  land  of  dreams  there  is  no  passion  and  no 
real  action.  Throughout  his  work  there  are  passages 
of  genuinely  beautiful  description,  and  occasionally 
—  not  often  —  single  lines  of  startling  beauty  of 
image.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  had  a  weakness 
for  sentimental  and  affected  epithet,  — which  he  very 
unfortunately  imparted  to  Keats,  —  and  his  taste  is 
never  quite  firm  and  sure.  From  his  tempera- 
ment and  surroundings  one  might  have  expected 
him  to  write  more  verse  like  the  charming  rondeau 
quoted  just  now,  Jenny  Kissed  Me,  short  occa- 
239 


A   GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

sional  lyrics  of  love,  or  compliment,  or  playful 
satire.  But  he  did  not.  His  muse  was  too  garru- 
lous and  gossiping  for  that.  His  satire  lacks  point; 
his  humor  lacks  sparkle ;  his  line  lacks  finish.  Only 
three  of  his  shorter  poems  are  now  really  alive,  and 
in  each  of  these  some  serious  feeling  gives  sincerity 
and  restraint  to  the  phrase:  the  A bou  ben  Adhem, 
his  one  familiar  poem;  the  sonnet  on  the  Nile,  his 
one  noble  poem;  and  the  Lines  to  T.  L.  H.,  Six 
Years  Old,  during  a  Sickness,  beginning 

"Sleep  breathes  at  last  from  out  thee, 
My  little  patient  boy." 

This  last  poem  is  the  best  example  of  the  character- 
istic gentleness  of  Hunt,  for  once  expressing  itself 
without  any  false  note.  It  is  enough  to  prove  that 
there  was  a  genuine,  if  slender,  vein  of  poetry  in 
the  man.  Of  course  T.  L.  H.  is  his  son  Thornton. 
For  Hunt  as  critic,  there  is  much  more  to  be  said. 
He  had  the  first  qualification  of  the  critic,  he  was  a 
lover  of  books.  Human  life  interested  him  chiefly 
as  stuff  to  be  made  up  into  literature.  That  was  one 
reason  why  he  could  not  be  a  poet  —  he  did  not  like 
life  at  first  hand.  With  reference  to  nature,  also,  he 
had  much  the  same  feeling.  It  was  Charles  James 
Fox,  I  believe,  who  once  said,  "There  is  only  one 
thing  in  life  more  pleasant  than  to  lie  under  an  apple 
tree  in  June  with  a  book ;  and  that  is  to  lie  under  an 

240 


LEIGH   HUNT 

apple  tree  in  June  without  a  book."  Hunt  would 
always  have  wished  the  book.  Indeed  he  seemed  to 
care  for  only  so  much  of  nature  as  might  serve  for 
pleasant  setting  for  his  reading;  he  had  no  use  for 
the  solitudes  and  solemnities.  No  doubt  this  liking 
to  look  at  all  things  through  the  spectacles  of  books 
may  have  deprived  him  of  that  freshness  of  view 
which  comes  from  bringing  everything  to  the  test 
of  life ;  but,  at  all  events,  it  gave  to  his  criticism  the 
zest  of  eager  personal  interest.  He  is  in  love  with 
his  theme.  He  smacks  his  lips  over  some  delicious 
passage  of  verse  as  if  taste  were  to  him  literally  a 
delight  of  sense.  And  he  has  in  rather  unusual 
degree  the  gift  to  impart  this  delight  to  the  reader. 
Some  paragraphs  of  his  on  Spenser,  for  example,  are 
among  the  best  things  ever  said  of  Spenser. 

His  criticism  is  doubtless  rambling  and  discur- 
sive. He  selects  favorite  passages  and  flits  from 
flower  to  flower.  His  appreciation,  moreover,  was 
limited.  He  liked  beauty,  grace,  luxuriance,  repose ; 
strenuous  action,  passion,  anything  rugged  or  sub-  \ 
lime  disconcerted  him.  In  style  he  was  inclined  to 
prefer  the  ornate  to  the  chaste,  captivating  beauty 
of  form  rather  than  a  more  severe  or  interior  charm. 
Naturally,  therefore,  he  was  a  better  critic  of  manner 
than  of  matter,  of  poetry  than  of  prose.  Further- 
more, as  he  had  no  constructive  ability  himself, 
so  he  had  little  sense  of  it  in  others.  He  takes  his 
&  241 


A   GROUP   OF    ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

literature  piecemeal,  and  does  not  appreciate  the 
larger,  more  structural  virtues  of  a  great  work  of 
literary  art.  Similarly,  he  is  not  always  able  to  per- 
ceive rightly  the  essential,  distinguishing  qualities 
of  an  author's  genius,  or  to  see  how  the  particular 
excellences  he  points  out  so  well  are  related  to  the 
author's  personality.  For  example,  he  says  of  the 
poet  he  ought  to  have  known  best,  Shelley,  that  if  he 
had  lived,  he  would  have  been  jthe  greatest  drama- 
tist since  Shakespeare.  This  is  about  as  mistaken  a 
verdict  as  could  possibly  be  pronounced  on  a  genius 
so  thoroughly  self-involved  and  lyrical  as  Shelley's. 
But  on  the  same  page,  speaking  of  Shelley's  style, 
Hunt  says:  "Nobody  has  a  style  so  orphic  and  pri- 
meval. His  page  is  full  of  mountains,  seas,  and 
skies,  of  light  and  darkness  and  the  seasons  and  all 
the  elements  of  our  being,  as  if  Nature  herself  had 
written  it."  Such  a  statement,  though  somewhat 
over-rhetorical,  certainly  is  admirably  suggestive  of 
Shelley's  manner;  but  Hunt  should  have  seen  that 
this  "orphic  and  primeval"  style  could  never  belong 
to  a  dramatist;  it  is  the  style  of  the  lyrist,  whose 
soul  seems  to  lie  open  to  every  breath  of  inspiration 
"that  under  heaven  is  blown."  So  Hunt  says  of 
Keats  that,  had  he  lived,  "he  would  doubtless  have 
written  in  the  vein  of  Hyperion,"  rising  superior  to 
the  " languishments  of  love"  that  made  the  Eve  of 
St.  Agnes  so  over-rich  and  languorous.  But  Hunt, 

242 


LEIGH   HUNT 

who  knew  the  whole  course  of  Keats'  life,  from 
its  beginning  to  its  end,  ought  to  have  remembered 
that  all  his  latest  work,  the  Lamia,  the  Eve  of 
St.  Mark,  the  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci,  showed 
no  tendency  to  the  development  of  a  classic  and 
chastened  imagination,  but  rather  a  preference  for 
the  rich  and  melancholy  studies  of  medievalism. 
His  genius,  thoroughly  romantic,  would  in  all  prob- 
ability, like  that  of  Rossetti,  have  grown  more  and 
more  in  love  with  the  mystic  half-lights  of  the  middle 
age. 

But  Hunt's  detached  critical  remarks  are  almost 
always  incisive  and  illuminating.  Thus  he  says 
of  Milton,  "He  had  not  that  faith  in  things  that 
Homer  and  Dante  had,  apart  from  the  intervention 
of  words;"  that  is  excellent  as  a  suggestion  of  the 
mode  of  Milton's  imagination  when  compared  with 
that  of  the  two  other  great  epic  poets.  He  works 
himself  into  a  rage  over  the  doctrines  of  Dante's 
poem,  declaring  it  (in  a  theological  point  of  view)  no 
better  than  the  dream  of  a  hypochondriac  savage; 
yet  he  was  acutely  sensitive  to  the  dramatic  power  of 
Dante,  and  you  will  look  far  to  find  a  better  expres- 
sion of  the  wonderful  sense  of  reality  above  the 
actual,  the  dream  vividness  of  Dante,  than  Hunt 
gives  in  these  few  words:  — 

"Whatever  he  paints  he  throws,  as  it  were,  upon 
its  own  powers;  as  though  an  artist  should  draw 

243 


A    GROUP   OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

figures  that  started  into  life  and  proceeded  to  action 
for  themselves,  frightening  their  creator.  Every 
action,  word,  and  look  of  these  creatures  becomes 
full  of  sensibility  and  suggestion.  The  invisible 
is  at  the  back  of  the  visible;  darkness  becomes  pal- 
pable; silence  describes  a  character,  nay,  forms  the 
most  striking  part  of  a  story ;  a  word  acts  as  a  flash 
of  lightning,  which  displays  some  gloomy  neighbor- 
hood, where  a  tower  is  standing  with  dreadful  faces 
at  the  windows ;  or  where  at  your  feet,  full  of  eternal 
voices,  one  abyss  is  beheld  dropping  out  of  another 
in  the  lurid  light  of  torment.  .  .  .  Dante  has  the 
minute  probabilities  of  a  Defoe  in  the  midst  of  the 
loftiest  poetry." 

Hunt's  critical  writing,  however,  is  not  all  desultory 
and  empirical.  His  contributions  to  literary  theory 
are  by  no  means  insignificant.  He  had  considerable 
power  of  analysis  and  definition,  and  he  had  thought 
more  carefully  upon  the  grounds  of  literary  excel- 
lence than  upon  any  other  subject.  He  took  espe- 
cial interest  in  the  essential  nature  and  the  technique 
of  poetry.  The  preface  to  the  volume  of  1832, 
from  which  I  just  now  quoted  his  statement  as  to  the 
modification  of  the  heroic  couplet,  contains  an  ad- 
mirable discussion  of  the  essentials  of  poetic  matter 
and  form;  while  his  fuller  treatment  of  the  subject, 
ten  years  later,  in  the  essay  entitled  What  is 
Poetry  ?  is,  on  the  whole,  as  satisfactory  an  answer 

244 


LEIGH   HUNT 

to  that  difficult  question  as  any  more  recent  writer 
has  been  able  to  give  us.  To  be  sure,  Hunt  does  not 
delve  very  deeply  in  his  subject,  and  he  is  afraid  of  an 
exhaustive  treatment  —  for  which  we  may  be  thank- 
ful; but  the  essay  is  full  of  the  most  acute  and  dis- 
criminating remark.  His  discussion  of  the  value 
of  musical  sensibility  in  verse,  of  the  difference 
between  smoothness  and  sweetness,  of  the  effect  of 
variety  in  accent,  of  alliteration  and  assonance,  his 
distinction  between  the  natural  and  the  prosaic,  — 
which  very  neatly  punctures  the  fallacy  in  Words- 
worth's famous  preface,  —  these,  among  other  pas- 
sages, may  be  cited  in  proof  of  the  delicacy  and  jus- 
tice of  his  taste  when  dealing  with  general  principles. 
The  whole  paper  is  very  suggestive;  and  it  is  very 
entertaining.  It  serves  as  an  introduction  to  the 
volume  he  called  Imagination  and  Fancy,  the  rest 
of  the  book  being  made  up  of  a  body  of  selections 
from  our  poetry  illustrating  the  principles  of  the  essay 
with  a  running  comment.  It  was  natural  for  Hunt 
to  consider  the  imagination  as  the  faculty  that  em- 
bellishes and  interprets,  rather  than  in  its  higher 
creative  functions;  indeed,  it  was  almost  inevitable 
he  should  do  so,  if  he  was  to  exhibit  it  in  brief  selec- 
tions. He  is,  therefore,  led  to  lay  perhaps  undue 
stress  upon  the  imagery  and  music  of  poetry  as  com- 
pared with  its  higher  values  of  thought  and  feeling. 
Yet,  on  the  whole,  I  do  not  know  any  volume  better 
245 


A   GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

fitted  to  guide  and  stimulate  a  growing  taste;  there 
is  hardly  anything  better  to  put  into  the  hands  of  a 
young  student  of  poetry.  A  companion  volume, 
made  up  in  the  same  way,  illustrating  wit  and  hu- 
mor, is  almost  as  good.  Both  books  were  written 
after  Hunt  was  sixty  years  old;  it  is  to  be  regretted 
that  he  did  not  live  to  carry  out  his  purpose  of  add- 
ing to  these  volumes  three  more,  treating  respec- 
tively of  action  and  passion,  of  contemplation,  and 
of  song.  For  his  taste  grew  steadily  broader  and 
sounder,  and  in  his  later  years  he  lived  to  appreciate 
very  justly  authors  —  Wordsworth  and  Scott,  for 
example  —  that  in  his  youth  he  had  sadly  misjudged. 
But  far  the  greater  part  of  Hunt's  work  was  in  the 
fornTof  the  short  periodical  essay.  He  had  fallen  in 
love,  as  we  have  seen,  with  the  eighteenth-century 
essayists  while  in  his  early  teens ;  and  his  first  purely 
literary  venture, — if  we  except  the  juvenile  poems,  — 
the  Reflector,  issued  in  1810,  was  modelled  closely 
upon  Addison  and  Goldsmith.  Here,  again,  I  think 
Hunt  may  be  credited  with  rejuvenating  an  old 
literary  form.  For  the  Reflector  was  the  first  really 
successful  attempt  in  the  nineteenth  century  to 
revive  the  light  periodical  essay,  after  its  ponderous 
mishandling  by  Johnson  in  the  Rambler  and  Idler. 
We  shall  remember  that  Hunt's  work  of  this  kind 
preceded  that  of  Lamb  and  Hazlitt ;  indeed  it  was  in 
periodicals  set  up  by  Hunt  that  both  Lamb  and  Haz- 

246 


LEIGH   HUNT 

litt  found  a  medium  for  the  publication  of  some  of 
their  best  work.  When,  a  little  later,  the  magazines 
began  to  appear,  there  was  a  demand  for  this  sort  of 
writing  —  as  there  has  been  ever  since.  We,  perhaps, 
in  the  twentieth  century,  think  ourselves  a  little  too 
earnest  for  this  kind  of  literature;  yet  if  any  man 
can  write  it  as  well,  for  example,  as  Thackeray  wrote 
it  in  his  Roundabout  Papers,  he  will  be  sure  of 
readers  to-day,  if  not  of  fame  to-morrow.  But  no 
kind  of  writing  above  mere  journalism  is  more 
ephemeral.  Not  only  the  Rambler  and  the  Idler,  but 
the  Bee  and  the  Citizen  of  the  World,  and  even  the 
Taller  and  the  Spectator,  it  is  to  be  feared,  now  repose 
undisturbed  upon  the  top  shelves;  and  Hunt's  Indi- 
cators and  Companions  have  doubtless  joined  them 
there.  It  is  only  some  remarkable  dexterity  of  style 
or  some  unique  humor  or  force  of  personality  that 
can  keep  such  work  from  oblivion.  Hunt  had  neither 
of  these  qualifications.  His  gossiping  papers  are 
very  pleasant  reading,  if  you  have  time  on  your 
hands;  but  they  have  no  compelling  charm.  After 
all  we  have  been  told  of  the  fascinating  converse  of 
the  man,  we  are  surprised  to  find  his  wit  has  so  little 
keenness,  and  his  humor  is  only  often  a  playful,  half- 
patronizing  familiarity.  Then,  again,  he  is  a  little 
too  bookish.  More  than  half  his  papers  are  nothing 
but  echoes  of  his  reading  —  old  stories  retold,  bits 
of  legend  or  romance,  scraps  from  his  favorite  au- 
247 


A    GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

thors.  And  even  those  drawn  directly  from  the  life 
of  the  street  or  the  fields  seem  to  lack  that  humorous 
observation  of  men  and  things  at  first  hand  that  makes 
the  papers  of  Steele,  for  example,  so  racy.  If  Hunt 
is  writing  on  coaches,  or  May-day  or  London  fog, 
he  is  sure  to  tell  you  what  the  poets  and  historians 
think  about  it,  and  may  give  you  a  score  of  quota- 
tions in  three  pages.  Nor  has  Hunt  the  power  to 
show  by  some  sudden  flash  of  imagination  the  subtle 
connection  of  the  simplest  things  with  the  most  seri- 
ous, as  Lamb  can  do,  or  to  pass  almost  insensibly 
on  any  familiar  occasion  into  a  train  of  lofty  and  sol- 
emn revery,  as  Hazlitt  so  frequently  does.  A  com- 
parison of  his  work  in  this  respect  with  Hazlitt' s  will 
show  how  inferior  is  Hunt's.  He  never  has  Hazlitt's 
marvellous  acuteness  of  analysis;  he  never  has 
Hazlitt' s  serious,  half -mournful,  but  large  and  in- 
spiring tone  of  reflection,  Hazlitt's  imagination  and 
passion,  Hazlitt 's  rhythm  and  distinction  of  manner. 
Yet,  after  all,  it  is  ungenerous  to  find  fault  with  a 
man  for  not  doing  better  what  he  has  done  so  well. 
For,  leaving  out  his  second-hand  stories,  and  admit- 
ting that  his  humor  is  often  insipid  and  his  sentiment 
wilted,  we  could  still  select  from  Hunt's  writing  a 
goodly  volume  of  essays  hard  to  surpass  in  their  kind. 
They  are  made  up  of  trifles;  but  then  life  is  made 
up  of  trifles.  We  need  not  withhold  some  cordial 
liking  from  that  kind  of  literature  which  does  not 

248 


LEIGH   HUNT 

attempt  to  arouse  or  inspire,  but  rather  to  express  the 
familiar  pleasures  that  cheer,  and  the  familiar  trials 
that  chasten,  the  hours  of  every  day.  Hunt  doesn't 
show  us  new  things,  or  even  new  meanings  in  the  old 
things.  He  talks  with  us  as  we  talk  with  each  other 
around  the  fire  on  winter  evenings,  of  our  habits,  our 
likings,  our  prejudices,  our  tasks,  our  books,  our 
clothes;  about  taxes  or  the  weather;  about  the  last 
play  we  have  seen  or  the  last  pretty  girl  we  have  met, 
—  for  Hunt  at  sixty,  with  nine  children,  was  still  a 
youngster,  —  or,  as  the  evening  wears  and  our  mood 
grows  a  shade  more  serious,  about  our  comforts, 
our  plans,  our  fancies,  our  friends,  and  —  for  Hunt 
was  always  more  a  benedict  than  a  bachelor  —  about 
all  the  snug  domesticities  of  home.  He  makes  no 
exactions  upon  your  thought,  and  he  seldom  invades 
your  emotions  beyond  that  outer  circle  friends  may 
approach  but  may  not  cross.  Such  papers  do  not 
rank  very  high  as  literature.  One  has  a  comfortable 
feeling  that  he  can  leave  them  alone,  if  he  likes, 
without  endangering  his  reputation  as  a  well-read 
man.  Yet  you  may  turn  over  the  pages  of  our  best 
magazines  of  to-day  without  finding  much  editorial 
writing  that,  for  interest,  might  not  well  be  exchanged 
for  these  little  papers  of  Leigh  Hunt. 

His  name  not  unfitly  closes  the  short  list  of  writers 
considered  in  this  volume.     His  career  was  longer 
than  that  of  any  other,  for  his  first  book  appeared  in 
249 


A    GROUP    OF   ENGLISH   ESSAYISTS 

1801  and  his  last  in  1855.  Perhaps  in  this  long  life 
he  had  neither  done  nor  suffered  quite  so  much  as  he 
himself,  when  near  its  close,  was  inclined  to  believe. 
He  was  not  of  the  stuff  that  scorns  delights  and  lives 
laborious  days.  He  had  solved  no  problems,  in- 
spired no  heroisms,  written  no  masterpieces.  But  he 
did  something  in  early  life  for  the  cause  of  civil 
liberty;  he  did  more,  I  think,  in  his  later  years  to 
quicken  and  widen  the  love  of  good  literature.  And 
through  all  that  half-century,  by  three  generations  of 
friends,  he  was  known  as  a  genial,  cheery  man,  who 
never  felt  the  tedium  of  life,  was  hopeful  under  all 
its  discouragements,  impatient  of  all  harshness,  fond 
of  all  gentle  and  beautiful  things.  Doubtless  he  was 
too  self-indulgent  to  be  the  ideal  philanthropist ;  yet 
we  may,  with  no  fulsome  exaggeration,  accord  to  him 
the  praise  he  himself  would  most  have  coveted, 
phrased  in  his  own  best  words :  — 

"Write  me  as  one  who  loved  his  fellow-men." 


250 


Essays  on  Modern  Novelists 
BY  WILLIAM  LYON   PHELPS, 

M.A.  Harvard,  Ph.D.  Yale  ;   formerly  Instructor  in  English  at 
Harvard  ;  Lampson  Professor  of  English  Literature  at  Yale. 

Ready  in  January,  1910 

Every  reader  of  contemporary  literature  has  found 
at  some  time  or  other  the  need  for  critical  guidance 
in  estimating  the  work  of  men  still  living.  Critics 
are  rarely  abreast  of  the  time  and  there  is  nothing 
so  difficult  to  obtain  as  authoritative  information  on 
events  of  the  day.  For  this  reason  the  brilliant  book 
in  which  Professor  Phelps  has  devoted  himself  to  the 
writings  of  modern  novelists  will  be  of  inestimable 
service  to  all  who  desire  to  form  a  really  sound 
judgment  upon  the  literature  of  the  day.  The 
writers  discussed  by  Professor  Phelps  are  William 
De  Morgan,  Thomas  Hardy,  William  Dean  Howells, 
Bjornstjerne  Bjornson,  Mark  Twain,  Henryk  Sienkie- 
wicz,  Hermann  Sudermann,  Alfred  Ollivant,  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  Rudyard 
Kipling  and  the  author  of  "Lorna  Doone." 
Of  these  writers  Professor  Phelps  gives  illuminating 
criticisms,  setting  forth  their  essential  qualities. 
Many  of  them  are  still  looking  to  the  future  more 
than  to  the  past,  and  all  of  them  are  the  men  and 
women  who- have  created  the  literature  of  the  period. 
The  work  also  contains  two  essays,  on  "  Novels  as  a 
University  Study"  and  "The  Teacher's  Attitude 
toward  Contemporary  Literature,"  and  concludes 
with  a  comprehensive  bibliography  and  appendix. 


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